"But what was your life like before?" This is the question that Ruth Irene Garrett, nee Miller, has been asked again and 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 Englischer and left the Amish community to begin her new life out in the world. In Born Amish 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 and foods; clothing, farming and tumbling about with many brothers and sisters. We learn about the expectations for girls and boys in Amish families, of social roles and understandings about courtship and marriage, about adult baptism and a life of faith in the Amish Church.