Ten years ago I started working on one of my favourite books. Back then my idea was to write a murder mystery set in and around my hometown of Fort Wayne and serialise it a la Kellerman or Cornwell. My protagonist was a ex-Amish woman doctor. Over the years as I evolved the story evolved too. It’s now a general novel about a woman’s life and it is without dead bodies. Well, there are some dead bodies, but they aren’t murdered.
Since I don’t read a lot of Christian fiction–or didn’t, until I got a Kindle*–I had no idea until a couple of years ago that Amish fiction was a big thing. I was chagrinned because I thought I was doing something less travelled. I actually ended up setting aside the book for awhile, as I lost all excitement in it.
But until this weekend I had not read any fiction with an Amish protagonist in 15 years. My last attempt involved a trilogy which starts out with an Amish girl and ends up with her finding out that she’s the long lost child of a movie star(?) who gave her up for adoption into an Amish family (?!). It was WEIRD. It was also the last Christian fiction I read for a decade–that’s how outlandishly soap opera terrible the whole thing was.
::engage mental editor–shorten up this long tale::
Over the weekend I was bored and wanted to read something Christmassy and I knew I had several free Christmas stories set in Amish Country.
Apparently the writers of these Christian Fiction pieces–they’re called Bonnet Romances–have decided to fetishise the Amish into these quaint, simple, earnest, one-dimensional platitude-spewing cardboard cutouts. Amish characters are apparently the version of Faeries that people who don’t believe in Fantasy novels turn to for escapeism.
Now, all of this would be fine. IF the Amish were made-up. But they’re not. They are really people who have three dimensions and more on their minds than marrying the boy down the road. I grew up around Amish folks. I’ve worked with young Amish on Rumschpringe. As a Mennonite I’ve gone to meeting with more ex-Amish than you’d believe. One Easter was spent at the house of two ex-Amish Mennonites sitting around a table with half a dozen other XA listening to stories of their lives Before and After.
In other words–I know these people. And while they are very nice people–generally–they aren’t some wishy-washy Pa Ingalls Meets St. Paul little mythical beasts.
And now I’m torn. Because part of me realises that there is most likely a place where my story would fit in the world. But at the same time I’m not really interested in the continued exploitation of what seems to be an increasingly misrepresented society of people.
*seriously. Those publishing houses excel at throwing Christian fiction at you. And since everyone keeps telling me how much better it’s gotten I occassionally try one of the free ones.
You had me at “Bonnet Romances.” ha! The only way I would read any of these types of things is if they were free. Every year for Christmas I end up with one of them stinkers or some other tome of religious wisdom aimed for “young women.” I’d rather just have some nice socks, thanks
It sounds to me like the audience for what you are (or were) writing and the audience for the books you are describing are not the same. So, in the first place, most of your prospective readers would be looking for a book with three-dimensional characters living their lives which you are going to present in a way that interests them. And in the second place, they will mostly be coming to your writing without the set of preconceptions about the Amish fostered by bonnet romances, thought they will surely have other preconceptions of their own. I don’t think that a non-Amish person writing about the Amish needs to be exploitative. For a parallel, look at Tony Hillerman.
I’ve never met any Amish and, to tell you the truth, I’ve always had a hard time believing that they actually exist. Your faery comparison really hit home with me, in other words. At the same time I have to say that I was disappointed to find out that they aren’t “some wishy-washy Pa Ingalls Meets St. Paul little mythical beasts.” I would have hoped that they were. One fantasy (of mine) less…
I’m just loving that these Amish books are available for Kindle.