Ken Yoder Reed

Ken Yoder Reed is a San Francisco Bay Area novelist, author of four historical novels and author of the upcoming Lover’s Quarrel: the Mennonites and Me.

Reed’s novels feature the Mennonites of eastern Pennsylvania, his boyhood home before moving to San Francisco in 1977, where he became a recruiter for Silicon Valley high-tech firms. He sold his firm, TKO Personnel, to NASDAQ-traded Hall Kinion in 1998 and went on to launch three more boutique recruiting firms. He has retired from active recruiting and spends his days writing, story-telling in Kids’ Club and introducing his two grandsons to Bible stories and gardening at their home in Fremont, CA, where he lives with his wife Patricia and their entertaining and lovable Malti-Poo, Oliver.

Reed is set to release his most personal work yet, Lover’s Quarrel—The Mennonites and Me, a riveting memoir chronicling his spiritual journey, literary pursuits, and deeply personal wrestle with Mennonite identity and Christian faith. Published by Amazon Kindle Publishing, the memoir will be available in paperback and Kindle e-book starting March 7, 2025. As a special offer, the publisher is providing an Early Bird discount for readers who purchase the book through the month of February, 2025..

With his signature wit and incisive prose, Reed recounts his journey from Lancaster County to Japan and Silicon Valley, navigating lost love, conscientious objection during the Vietnam War, and reconciliation with a faith he once resisted. “Because God loved this farm boy, He intervened after I spent a decade disparaging and cursing His people, convinced I wasn’t the ‘faith type,’” Reed writes. In the memoir he also explores how his artistic voice emerged within a tradition that often limited creative expression.