This volume is the biography of Paul Tschetter, a leading figure in late nineteenth-century Hutterite history, the "Hutterite Joshua," who convinced 1,250 Hutterites to leave Russia in the 1870s and resettle in Dakota Territory. Tschetter's life elucidates the way that an immigrant community fought for survival in a North American environment that stressed assimilation to radically different political, economic, cultural, and religious values. Janzen provides an in-depth narrative and analysis of Tschetter's influence based on diaries, sermons, hymns, interviews, and other primary materials.

Rod Janzen is Distinguished Scholar and Professor of History at Fresno Pacific University. He is the author of The Prairie People: Forgotten Anabaptists (1999) and The Rise and Fall of Synanon: A California Utopia (2001).