Feb 25, 2015 | Amish fiction, Uncategorized
A funny thing often happens when you begin writing a new book: even though you had all the characters in your head and all the major story points plotted out, the ending can be quite a lot different than you’d originally pictured it. I love when that happens! And in the case of HARVEST OF BLESSINGS, the fifth book in my Seasons of the Heart series, Nora Glick Landwehr’s story becomes a turning point for the town of Willow Ridge—and a springboard for a new series!
Nora has a tough row to hoe. After sixteen years and a failed marriage to an Englisch man, she returns to Willow Ridge to reconcile with the family who cast her out when, at sixteen, she became pregnant out of wedlock. Almost out of spite, Nora left that baby on her brother’s doorstep and pursued the only life she believed she had open to her.
Well, it didn’t work out. Her handsome Englisch husband left her for “someone more interesting and sophisticated” but Nora was smart enough to press for a large, lucrative divorce settlement. So when she shows up in the Old Order Amish town she grew up in, she’s got a lot of black marks on her record . . . a lot of people to ask forgiveness of . . . a sixteen-year-old daughter who has no idea that Nora is her mother. It doesn’t help that she buys the biggest house in town—which immediately links her to Hiram Knepp, the deceptive excommunicated bishop—and that she shows up in a red sports car wearing short shorts and a sparkly blue ball cap.
I knew going in that Luke Hooley, Nora’s commit-a-phobe neighbor, was going to chase after her from the get-go. I did not expect Luke to evolve into Nora’s biggest supporter and best friend when it seemed that no one in her family would welcome her home. And while I also knew she was going to convert the big horse barn on her property into a consignment store for Plain crafts and gift items, I had no idea that she was a crafter herself (she creates 3-D banners of Plain people and farm scenes) nor did I anticipate the store’s immediate success and the overwhelming support Nora gets from the characters we’ve met earlier in the series.
I also knew that Millie Glick, whom we’d met in earlier books, would be in for the shock of her young lifetime when she finds out that this flashy redheaded woman in the red sportscar is her mother. Millie experiences my own feelings of betrayal and disbelief, which I so vividly recalled from learning that the dad who raised me was not my birth father—except Millie was only 16 and I was 40 when we made this life-changing discovery. When you invest your own very personal experience into a story, you risk dredging up all the muck again and perhaps getting people in your family upset again, as well.
But in this case, my investment paid off not only in an emotionally authentic story—but also in a spin-off series! My editor and I didn’t want the Seasons series to get too long (off-putting to readers who’ve not discovered me until the fifth or sixth book), but we didn’t want to leave the town of Willow Ridge, either. So starting in 2016, Simple Gifts will continue this homey little town’s story and Nora Hooley will be the anchor character in a series that centers around her shop of the same name. It was a payoff I’d never anticipated—an ending even happier than the one I’d planned to write in the first place!
Mar 5, 2012 | Uncategorized
Along with the pleasure of seeing my first Naomi King book, ABBY FINDS HER CALLING, on the shelves in bookstores this week, I received a fine, fun email from Jim, the fellow in Jamesport, Missouri, who assists me with the details of these Amish romances. He wrote, “Joe Burkholder’s wife read your two books, and they want to carry them in their store. You passed the Amish test!”
Now, while it’s nothing new to Beverly Lewis, Cindy Woodsmall, or other well-established authors of Amish novels to have their books stocked in Amish shops, this is a first for me. It’s important not just because Jamesport is the model for the Amish towns in my two series, or because it’s nice to have my books in the Burkholders’ store alongside those big-name authors I mentioned, but because I now have another layer of credibility. The Amish folks I’ve recently started writing about consider me authentic.
And considering how the Amish don’t much care to be exploited in print—considering how Jim, my private tour guide and resource guy, told me not to mention that I was a writer while he was taking me around Jamesport—this is a major accomplishment! It means that Joe Burkholder and his wife will now be chatting up all their Plain friends and the tourists in their store about these two novels that mention Jamesport. My books will become a unique memento for them to sell and a way for me to attract new readers. [Jim, by the way, runs Step Back In Time Tours in Jamesport, and if you would like to visit there, or bring your tour buses there, check him out at StepBackInTimeTours.net]
A fun twist: during my initial tour of Jamesport, Jim told me about how the Burkholders’ home had burned to the ground when their chimney caught fire a few years ago. In the freezing cold December weather, the local men worked long shifts, eating meals their wives took turns bringing to the site, dealing with the ice around the foundation from the firemens’ hoses. They used big lights provided by their Mennonite friends so they could work after dark. They rebuilt that home by the New Year!
I got goose bumps hearing that story—my editor got goose bumps from that story—so ABBY FINDS HER CALLING features a subplot where the Ropp family’s home catches fire and is rebuilt that same way. Because Rudy Ropp had stopped trusting the bank, all their life savings had been stashed in that house . . . one of their sons had caused a major scandal in Cedar Creek, getting a girl pregnant, and he and his brother had jumped the fence (left the faith rather than joining the Amish church), but by the book’s end those family ties are restored. Healing and forgiveness come about because the fire brings the Ropp boys home again and forces their dad, Rudy, to reevaluate some of his beliefs and behavior.
It’s particularly rewarding that the real-life family who inspired a major part of my book is now going to sell that book in their store. Isn’t that the neatest piece of synchronicity?
It’s also a plus that I can pass this news on to my editor, who has been scribbling all over the margins of the manuscript for my upcoming book, “is this Amish?” or “do Amish really do this?” She’s been using her eagle-eye, asking me to validate my details and research (and she’s more accustomed to the ways of the Amish in the eastern U.S. Plain folks in Missouri do some things differently) so I hope she, too, will feel good about this on-site Amish response to ABBY FINDS HER CALLING.
After writing this book on a tabletop office, while we were selling, buying, and remodeling homes as we moved from Missouri to Minnesota, it’s gratifying indeed to hear that my work has “passed the Amish test.”
Oct 11, 2011 | Uncategorized
I never thought I’d buy another can of Spam, ever. Not that Spam is any worse for you than other processed products on the shelves these days…and since I’m a Boomer, I can recall when Spam was a pretty nifty (ooh, that word verifies my era, not?) convenience food that generated slews of recipes we loved because, well—it was the new thing. If you didn’t like Spam you were pretty square. Doomed to pot roast or meat loaf, or to baking a real ham.
The reason I bought this can of Spam? The can itself! I found an Amish cookie recipe in The Budget, the Plain community’s weekly national newspaper, that I had to try simply because after you made the dough and chilled it, the directions said to roll it out and cut it with a Spam can (recipe follows). I got an immediate image in my mind of how that cookie would look, and because it was totally different from anything I could make with my hundred or so cookie cutters, I bought a small can of Spam. And then, because Boomer girls were raised never to waste food, I sliced the Spam as part of a sandwich-makings tray I prepped for lunch when my best friend and her husband came for a visit to our new home. We didn’t eat any of it, but it generated some great conversation!
The fact that I found this reference to a Spam can in an Amish recipe was the sort of out-of-the-can research discovery that shakes up your expectations. It makes you see your world—or the world you write about—in a different light…or shape, in this case. Most of us wouldn’t think an Amish cook would buy Spam, or other “convenience” foods because we have this idea that Plain folks cook everything from scratch, and that all of their recipe ingredients are basic foods they probably raised in their garden or butchered themselves.
My editor and I had this discussion when I turned in the recipe section for SUMMER OF SECRETS because when she saw ingredients like Cheez Whiz, Cool Whip, and a box of cake mix (gasp!) she questioned whether Plain cooks would use such foods. Well, the little locally-written cookbook I bought in the Jamesport Old Order community is written proof that these ladies like to save time in the kitchen just like the rest of us do. So are the recipes I find in The Budget’s cooking column.
And if you check those Plain dresses hanging on Amish or Mennonite clotheslines, you’ll discover a lot of polyester blend fabrics because they don’t require ironing after they come out of a wringer washer. When you’re raising eight kids, who has time to iron all those dresses and shirts? An ad in a recent edition of The Budget was a gold mine of research for me because it was nearly a half page of the various fabrics on sale at this Amish supplier, and because the heroine of my new NAL Amish series is a seamstress. I might have ditched my double knit clothing long ago, but the folks I write about have not!
So I’ve had my horizons widened and some assumptions proven wrong as I write these new books—and sometimes I’ve been taken back to my past and found that “all things old are made new again” when it comes to writing. And cooking.
Here’s the recipe for Sally Ann Cookies. You can be the judge, but I’m betting they just won’t taste the same if you cut them out with anything other than a Spam can!
Sally Ann Cookies
½ C. shortening,
½ C. hot coffee
1 C. molasses
2 tsp soda –Mix these in a large bowl and then add
3 C. flour
½ tsp. nutmeg, ¼ tsp. ground cloves
Mix well and chill several hours. Roll out and cut with a Spam can. Bake at 350º
for 6-8 minutes.
Sally Ann Frosting:
1 envelope plain gelatin
¾ C. sugar
Scant ½ C. water—Mix these, then stir in ¾ C. powdered sugar, adding more if needed. Beat until foamy and add 1 tsp. vanilla, beat again. Frost flat sides of cookies.
A funny thing often happens when you begin writing a new book: even though you had all the characters in your head and all the major story points plotted out, the ending can be quite a lot different than you’d originally pictured it. I love when that happens! And in the case of HARVEST OF BLESSINGS, the fifth book in my Seasons of the Heart series, Nora Glick Landwehr’s story becomes a turning point for the town of Willow Ridge—and a springboard for a new series!