Holmes County man leaves Amish roots to become a doctor, then pens book with his daughter

If you can write a book with your father, Liz Miller highly recommends it.

"It was a really fun experience to have that time together," she said about helping her father, Dr. Albert Miller, write his memoirs about leaving the Amish in Holmes County and becoming a doctor.

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"We learned more about each other and it definitely made us closer," Albert Miller added.

Their self-published "You Can't Do That!" is available on Amazon and area bookstores for $16.99, with Father's Day in mind.

Albert Miller has a few local book signings later this month — from 5 to 7 p.m. June 23 at Montavino Wine Market, 2017 Portage Road, Wooster; and 9 a.m. to noon June 25 at Gospel Book Store, 4900 Oak St., Berlin.

"When we had a fuller book together, we decided to get it out before Father's Day this year to celebrate and just because we think it was a really wonderful experience to work together," said Liz Miller, 37, who also was happy to be able to send her dad the final copy for him to proof on May 15 for his 69th birthday.

If you think it's too much work as a daughter or son to write a book with your father, think again. It took the Millers four years to publish theirs and they live thousands of miles apart in different countries, dealt with the COVID pandemic and have full-time jobs.

Albert Miller is an emergency room doctor at Flowers Hospital in Dothan, Alabama in the southeast corner of the state, north of the Destin, Panama City area of Florida.

For the past 12 years, Liz Miller has lived in Brazil, where she works for GetSetUp, an American online platform that helps older adults with technology.

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Without technology, the father and daughter probably wouldn't have been able to publish their book.

Liz showed her dad an app to do voice messages about his life experiences he could send to her.

Lived in Wooster, worked as an emergency room doctor at Samaritan

She said that reminded her of growing up in Wooster when her dad dictated into a recorder about his jobs as a family practice doctor in Holmes County and Wooster, and both as a part- and full-time ER doc in Ashland, Massillon and Willard. Most of his time then was spent working full-time at Ashland's Samaritan hospital.

He started his job in 2009 in Alabama, where the two have occasionally met since then. They have met more in Ohio for family events and Florida, where Dr. Miller's Amish relatives go for vacations and another daughter lives.

As the years have gone by, he said, the relationships with his 10 siblings have slowly improved. When he left the Amish as an 18-year-old, he was shunned by his family. They took his leaving especially hard because his father was a deacon.

"A lot of the stories in Amish literature are angry and very negative about leaving the Amish. There's a lot of negativity around them," Liz Miller said. "One of the things my dad wanted to do was show what happened, but not make it an I'm-mad-at-the-Amish story."

The two also met several times in Brazil, often visiting the Amazon during the day and going over the book in the evening.

Brazil is the sixth country Liz Miller has called home. Spain, Bulgaria, Ghana, Turkey and the U.S. are the others. She hasn't lived in the United States since she graduated from North Carolina State University and has visited many other states and nearly 80 countries

"I got my dad's adventurous spirit," she said. "We both left the cultures we grew up in to create lives in different ones."

Attended Kent State, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine

While she knew it was difficult for her father to leave the Amish and go from an eighth-grade education to not studying, to getting his GED and to attending college at Kent State (Tuscarawas and the main campus), followed by medical School (University of Cincinnati College of Medicine), surgical internship (Cleveland) and residency (back in Cincinnati), she never realized how tough it really was until work on the book began.

"I had heard bits and pieces of these stories growing up but I didn't understand how they fit together and I really didn't understand how much of a struggle it was for him," Miller said. "My dad didn't mention much of that before."

Delving deeper into his life and the Amish culture also helped her better understand where her dad was coming from and why she had to teach him certain things growing up, Miller said.

She even traveled with her dad to meet some of the people who helped him adjust to life outside his Amish community, including a professor at Kent State who now lives in Atlanta.

"I had a lot of people that God put in my life at the right time," Albert Miller said.

As the child of a former Amish member, Liz Miller also had struggles that her dad discovered.

"A unique thing about the book is Liz has her experiences throughout," Miller said.

The pair decided to self publish because it gives them more flexibility with and control of their book, said Liz Miller, who added, unless you're a big-name author it's hard to get in with a publishing company. She also has self-published a bilingual children's book.

Is their another father-daughter project in the future?

"We haven't ruled it out, but we don't have any plans now," she said. "We're just excited to see this one in print and see where it goes.

"It was really unique and fun to do as kind of a father-daughter duo," she added with a big smile.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: From Amish life to doc: Holmes County native shares his story