As noted, Amity - Stories from the Heartland is a collection of short stories by well-known Quaker writer Brent Bill. Each story is set in the Midwest of the United States, a region known for its honest, hardworking, plain-speaking, religious people who are as complex and thoughtful as the most urbane city dwellers. These stories are about 1930s housewives, modern day priests, 1960s kids, and more -- as well as the varieties and vagaries of their lives’ trials, triumphs, failings, joys, sorrows, and surviving -- and the beauty and mystery of it all. Inclusive of characters, places, and spaces that are as imaginatively mesmerizing as most anything I have personally had the pleasure to read over the past few years, this wondrous collection Amity: Stories from the Heartland from author J. Brent Bill veritably leads you gently by the hand into a series of worlds that, collectively bring forth a tapestry of family resonance that should ignite a heartwarming nod of familial understanding within us all. Reminding us how to live, let alone why we should live, through these retellings of small town America, Amity is delightfully impassioned, along with being warm and funny in equal measures, and is a must-read, of that you have my word. ~ Anne Carlini - Exclusive Magazine, https://annecarlini.com/ex_books.php?id=572

This collection of short stories is crafted by an American Heartland writer who knows and understands and appreciates the unique gifts, cultures, idiosyncrasies, and wonders of the villages and towns and people about which he writes. The stories that open and close the book ("A Trip to Amity" and "Another Trip to Amity") are worth the price of "Amity: Stories from the Heartland" on their own. But between those bookend essays are other spellbinding tales that will make you want to nestle in around a cozy fire and finish the entire collection in one sitting, like I did. If you have read J. Brent Bill's non-fiction work in the area of spirituality, you'll want to pick up "Amity: Stories from the Heartland" for another facet of this marvelous writer's work. And if you are new to Bill's work, this is a wonderful place to start. It's my hope that this first collection of short fictional stories will NOT be Bill's last such offering. Kudos to Bill and to his publisher, Roundfire Books, for such a fine book. ~ Jeff Crosby, President, Evangelical Christian Publishing Assocation, Amazon.com

With a gentle sense of humour J. Brent Bill takes us back to a time when life was so much less complicated than it is today while visiting the little moments that make people special in Amity: stories from the Heartland. ~ Ian Banks - Blue Wolf Reviews, https://bluewolf-reviews.com/books/fiction/amity-stories-from-the-heartland/

With deep emotion and subtlety, J. Brent Bill has built a rich world of fully imagined characters. This brilliant collection sits nicely next to Middle American classics Winesburg, Ohio and Mrs. Bridge. ~ Dan Hornsby, author of Via Negativa

As I read Brent's stories, I kept sensing that line from Kristofferson's classic: 'And Lord, it took me back to somethin' that I'd lost. Somewhere, somehow along the way.' Clean as a breeze storytelling fills these pages, a gift because we so quickly forget what really matters. ~ John Blase, author and poet

These warm-hearted, sweetly nostalgic stories evoke a world that is resonant with hope and graciousness. Here are characters wrestling with their ambitions and desires, and finding goodness in unexpected places. The goodness is always offered up. In these stories, it’s there for the taking. ~ Erin McGraw, author of Joy and others

The people and places in these stories resonated with me in much the same way my own family stories resonate. It is as if Brent Bill has peered into our collective past and told the stories of our ancestors, people who are ours but who we have not yet met. And he imparts the stories with such grace and kindness, conveying that, ‘Here we are. This is what we are made of. And it is good.’ I’ve not read stories like this since reading Wendell Berry. ~ Shawn Smucker, author of Light From Distant Stars

It was Joan Didion who said, 'We tell ourselves stories in order to live.' In this visit to Amity, Brent Bill reminds us how, and why, to live. Poignant, humorous, winsome, and wise, this is Bill doing what he does best–going before us, shining the Light. ~ Philip Gulley, author of the Harmony series

A delightful collection of very varied stories grounded in the detail of everyday life in small town America. By turns comic and touching, its deceptively light touch reveals the deeper realities beneath seemingly humdrum events. How even in the dark times love, grace and redemption can prevail. ~ Jennifer Kavanagh, author of The Emancipation of B and The Silence Diaries

These stories took me back to reading O. Henry and made me forget my angst of the day. If you could bottle these, the pharmaceutical industry would take a hit. 'I’m stopping your Prozac and prescribing four Brent Bill stories each day and one O. Henry every two weeks.' ~ Marcy Hawley, Orange Frazer Press

Brent Bill's 'Stories From the Heartland' are old-fashioned tales of small town life in the twentieth century, warm and good-hearted and sometimes LOL funny. A good choice for fans of Jan Karon's Mitford novels. ~ Peggy Payne, a NY Times Notable novelist, author of Revelation and others