Several years ago I was contacted by my editor at Harvest House and asked to write an Amish novel. I’d always said I would never write an Amish book, for several reasons. First, there are a lot of writers out there who write Amish stories better than I thought I could. Second, my brother-in-law was raised Amish and shunned when he left the faith and embraced the Southern Baptist denomination. As a result, he didn’t have many positive comments about the Amish way of life. And third, the Amish fiction I’d read was too mild, too romance-oriented, and just not my cup-of-tea. I had co-authored three Amish books previously, but they were different. They were comedies in which Amish-Meets-The-Wild-West, fashioned after the James Garner movie, “Support Your Local Gunfighter.” The books didn’t appeal to staunch fans of Amish fiction, and which in my mind proved my first reason. (Though I still love The Amish of Apple Grove stories!) So when my editor called and asked if I was interested in writing a book the publisher had already titled The Amish Widower, I said, “No thank you.”
Not ten minutes after I hung up, my phone rang again. It was my agent.
“You did not just turn down a book contract, did you?” she asked.
“Well, yeah,” I replied. “I mean, they want me to write Amish!”
During the following ten minutes my agent explained all the reasons I should accept the contract. Book contracts were hard to come by. Publishers almost never contacted authors to write a book, so I should be flattered that Harvest House thought well enough of me to contact me. Plus, it would be a challenge – I’d never written anything like that before. She suggested I call my editor back and talk about the kind of book I wanted to write. Excellent advice, so that’s what I did. I contacted my editor and told her if they wanted a sappy romance about a widower who had lost his wife and was looking for a replacement to mother his children, I wasn’t the right writer. But if she would let me write a gut-wrenching novel where the characters struggle with meaningful issues that had real-life implications, then I was in. She said, “I can’t wait to read it.”
So I wrote The Amish Widower. I began the book with a heart-wrenching accident, in which the main character, Seth, loses his second wife. To make matters even more devastating, she was pregnant. Seth privately begins to think he is cursed, and determines not to marry again, no matter how hard his family tries to convince him otherwise. To research the book I not only studied the Amish lifestyle, but also the long-term effects of suppressed PTSD. And pottery! I’d always wanted to learn pottery, so I took lessons and managed to produce a few pretty good pieces. Imagine the satisfaction of taking a lifeless lump of clay and turning it into something beautiful. It was cathartic for me, and for Seth.
By the time I finished the manuscript, I truly felt that The Amish Widower was one of the best novels I’d ever written. I still do. This is a book with teeth, and it deals with one of the most important issues a person–Amish or not–will ever deal with, that of digging deep to find forgiveness for people who have hurt us in terrible ways.
Imagine my delight when the book came out and one of the first reviews I read said, “This is not your typical Amish novel. This book has staying power.”
The Amish Widower is now on sale in all eBook formats – Kindle, Nook, Apple, or whatever other format you read. The regular price is $7.99, but the sale price is just $0.99. That’s almost 88% off the retail price!
Hurry to snag your copy now. The sale ends July 5th.
