Christian Romance Novels Set in Amish Country Pick Up the Pace

For many readers today, it's all about the bonnet. In our sex-soaked society, nothing seems to inflame the imagination quite like the chaste.

In popular series such as Beverly Lewis' Seasons of Grace, Wanda Brunstetter's Indiana Cousins and Cindy Woodsmall's Sisters of the Quilt,the Amish fall in love while grappling with religious taboos and forbidden temptations.

And it all happens in über-quaint settings brimming with hand-sewn quilts, horse-drawn buggies and made-from-scratch Pennsylvania Dutch specialties such as shoofly pie.

"It's a huge, huge, huge trend," says romance blogger Sarah Wendell, co-author of Beyond Heaving Bosoms.

Who are the Amish? In a 21st-century world, the strictest among them live a 19th-century lifestyle. They are a religious, Christian-based farming community that shuns most modern conveniences such as phones and TVs, and they travel by horse and buggy. They marry among their own faith; the women wear bonnets and modest, drab clothing, the men wear brimmed hats and grow their beards. Children are taught in one-room schoolhouses, and education ends in the eighth grade. Traditional courtship rituals include "Sunday evening singing" group gatherings, where boys and girls can meet. Premarital sex is verboten.

So what is their appeal to modern readers? Remember when Kelly McGillis' modest Amish beauty enraptured Harrison Ford's homicide detective in the 1985 hit Witness? His tough contemporary cop, who pretended to be Amish to protect the widow Rachel Lapp and her young son, saw a whole new world when he lived amid the closed community of barn-raisers and farmers.

With Amish inspirationals, which are shelved under "religious fiction" in bookstores like Barnes & Noble, "readers get to peer inside the Amish community, and it is not like our own community," says McDaniel College English professor Pamela Regis, author of A Natural History of the Romance Novel. "Simplicity is a hallmark of that community, and simplicity is powerful."

The original creators of the Real Simple life were a group of 16th-century European Protestants who embraced the biblical injunction to turn away from the world. Their descendants are often called "The Plain People." The largest Amish communities in the USA are in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio.

While more liberal Amish and Mennonite groups allow members to drive, the Amish inspirational novels focus on the strictest of the strict -- the no-car, no-electricity crowd.

And that low-tech lifestyle creates a small-town atmosphere, which has deep appeal for readers who may find Wi-Fi-only connections emotionally isolating. "Even within your own neighborhood, you feel alone," says Jane Little of the influential romance blog Dear Author. In an Amish inspirational, "we're all one big family," she says.

Professor Regis points out that since the 19th century, American women have devoured sentimental novels celebrating faith and family, hearth and home. But unlike, say, Little House on the Prairie, fans don't need to time- travel to see the Amish. They only need visit tourist-friendly Lancaster, Pa., to witness the Amish in action, which adds to the genre's allure.

"Here you have this agrarian society that is closed to outsiders right in the middle of the Northeast," says Wendell. "It's both historical and contemporary."

And popular: On Sept. 7, Beverly Lewis, queen of the genre, will launch a series called The Rose Trilogy withThe Thorn (Bethany House, $14.99).

Set in Lancaster, the series follows two very different sisters. An impulsive marriage to the non-Amish Brandon has thrust Hen into the modern world, from whose alien, materialist values she wants to shield her young daughter. Meanwhile, dutiful Rose is torn between two suitors.

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