The Shunning

The Shunning is a novel by Beverly Lewis, published in 1997. It is set in an Amish community called Hickory Hollow in Pennsylvania, where the Old Order traditions are kept and very little changes.

The calm is not as solid as it appears. A secret is buried in the community, and the book opens when Katie Lapp finds it: a satin infant gown hidden in the dusty leather trunk of her parents' attic. She has lived in the community her whole life and has never had reason to doubt where she came from.

Katie knows that the gown holds a story she has to understand, because there is no other reason for her mother, a plain and simple woman who embraces the Old Order laws, to have hidden something so beautiful away.

The novel follows what happens when one daughter of the community starts asking about the past, and it is about the cost of the answer in a place where being shunned is the severest thing that can happen to a person.