For instance, when Emma first encounters the Englisch cowboy Luke Carson, her grandmother lectures, “Remember your instruction, girl. Keep your eyes cast down until the Lord raises them. Then you will see only what He wants you to see.” Oh, how she tries to obey that instruction! Or once, when forced to wait for her papa to make a critical decision, Hard it is to wait on the Lord, but worse to wish you had. How often has that been true in my life.

I think Amish parents are onto something with their proverb-quoting. How often has a memorized scripture verse come to your mind at just the right time? If parents can help to instill those deeply-learned lessons that will arise at just the right time, what a wonderful legacy to leave our children with. Words are powerful, and when used to instruct and train, they can have an impact on an entire generation.

3/4 cup flour

1 T. cornmeal

1 T. sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

1/2 cup cold milk

2 1/2 cups onions, finely diced

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, salt, and pepper.  Stir in the milk to make a thick batter, stirring out lumps.  Add the onion and mix well again.

Heat oil in a deep-fat fryer or deep-sided frying pan.  Drop batter by heaping teaspoonfuls into the hot oil.  Fry for a couple of minutes until golden brown on bottom side; turn and fry the other side until golden.  Remove with a slotted spoon and serve immediately.

From “The Homestyle Amish Kitchen Cookbook” by Georgia Varozza.

Emma Switzer is traveling from her home in Apple Grove to the bigger Amish district of Troyer to move in with her aunt. Her primary purpose is to meet an Amish husband. Apple Grove, her small Amish community, has little to offer in the way of marriageable young men, so her papa and grandmother decide her best chances are in Troyer. They don’t anticipate the trouble they will have along the way, or the handsome Englisch cowboys who will come to their rescue.

Apple Grove and Troyer are both fictitious Amish communities set in Kansas in the 1800’s. Troyer is based on an actual settlement – Yoder, Kansas, which was established in the late 1800’s by Amish immigrants from Illinois and Ohio. And Apple Grove is completely fictitious, set in the northwestern corner of Kansas west of Hays City.

I’ve been a fan of Amish fiction for a while now. My brother-in-law was raised Amish, and he and my sister-in-law still live in Holmes County, Ohio, just miles from the farm where he was raised. I love visiting there, and learning about his upbringing and heritage from him and his brothers. Some of my favorite authors are Mindy Starnes Clark, BJ Hoff, Jerry Eicher and Mary Ellis. How honored I am to join their ranks in writing a book with Amish roots.

I hope you’ll watch for The Heart’s Frontier, book 1 in the Amish of Apple Grove series, due out in early March 2012. And I hope that you’ll let me know what you think of the story.

Many people think so. They travel to Amish regions in the US and Canada, cameras ready, to take pictures of people who don’t want to be photographed just because those people look quaint or old-fashioned.

Quite apart from not wanting to be photographed, I doubt the Amish want to be thought of as quaint, especially when it comes to their Christian faith and Christian lifestyle. I know I wouldn’t be. Quaint makes you sound cute, sweet and out-of-date, and I wouldn’t want my Christian faith to be described using any of those terms. I’m pretty sure the Amish wouldn’t like those words applied to their faith either.

The Amish take their faith seriously – it is the reason they live and dress as they do. It is the reason they still use horses and buggies, the reason they meet in homes and not church buildings, the reason the women have their hair up under prayer kapps. They are what people call quaint because it is their way of following Christ. But to them their faith is alive and vibrant and has a lot to say to the modern people and modern times that swirl around them. Theirs is not a dead faith or an antiquated faith or a fossilized faith, as far as they are concerned. It is brimming with Jesus in 2012 – not just 1912 or 1812.

This is one of the challenges for both the writers and readers of Amish fiction – to make the Amish real in their minds and hearts and imaginations, not quaint, not dated, not precious throwbacks to another era that have nothing much to say about real life and a real God to this one. Yes, the Amish live in many ways as if it is still the late 1800s. But why they do it and what they believe has a lot to say to anyone seeking Christ or following him in the 2100s. So the writer and reader need to work together to make sure that the charm of an 1800s way of life the world left behind in a hurry in the 1920s and 30s is not the only takeaway from Amish fiction.

The commitment to one another and to community is important. Seeking God’s will and not the world’s is also crucial. The value of humility, quietness, peace, and self-sacrifice are right up there. So are avoidance of war, rejecting conflict with your neighbors, forgiveness, and deep and abiding relationships. There is much more, as careful writers, readers, and researchers know.

The challenge is to say with Amish fiction that there is a beauty to the Amish ways but not just because they drive buggies and plow with oxen and make butter with butter churns. The beauty is they do all that and remain absolutely relevant to the people of the 21st century. Especially those who are seekers after God, followers of Christ, and men and women lost in the maelstrom of modern life who wish there was another way, even a better way, for them to raise their families and live out the threescore and ten years God has allotted them.

Reading A Brides Flight! Love IT! I want to write that beautifully….it’s smooth going down, but leaves you FULL….not embarrassed you spent a bit of your life reading it. Most fiction makes me sorry I read it. . . I’ll be spreading the word about this one for sure!
I love when she hollers about the creation of light at the beginning….

email from a reader from New Mexico

A friend contacted me on Facebook this morning to tell me the ecopy she had pre-ordered showed up on Kindle early this morning and she had already started reading it. A ranching couple I had given a printed copy to for Christmas contacted me to say they had dug right into it and had had a great read over the holidays. So that’s a nice beginning for which I’m grateful.

The bare bones plot (if you didn’t pick up on it from earlier posts): A young woman attempts to keep two children safe from a murderer by fleeing east to her old home in Pennsylvania’s Amish country, a region she vowed never to return to. Now she must not only do everything in her power to ward off the killer who stalks them, but deal with the people, personalities, and issues that made her leave the Amish faith to begin with. One man tries to help her, but he is a man haunted by his own past – the slaughters of the Civil War made him vow never to fight or use a gun again. The killer, known as The Angel of Death, has no such qualms.

A surprise romance between the woman and man binds them closer to each other and to the two children. It even brings them closer to the Amish of Bird in Hand and closer to God. But from the killer’s point of view, the four of them don’t have a prayer . . .

I hope you pick up a copy and enjoy the ride!