"But what was your life like before?" This is the question that Ruth Irene Garrett, nee Miller, has been asked again and again by the thousands of inspired and fascinated guests who have attended her lectures and programs on her life growing up Amish to young womanhood, when she fell in love with an "Englisher" and left the Amish community to begin her new life out in the world. Now, working with co-author and friend Deborah Morse-Kahn, we learn about Ruth Irene Garrett's early life as a child growing up in the Amish farming community of Kalona, Iowa: school, games, and chores; work, crafts, Deborah Morse-Kahn is a Minnesota author.