Jill Miller (Newsweek)
"Amish romance novel" is not an oxymoron. It's a publishing success story saturating the market:
"Amish romance novel" is not an oxymoron. It's a publishing success story saturating the market: “We’re seeing Amish fiction splintering into everything imaginable -- Shakers, Puritans,” says Steve Oates, marketing vice president for Bethany House, the Christian publisher whose author Beverly Lewis is the biggest name in Amish fiction.
“We call it ‘bonnet fiction.’ You slap a bonnet on the cover and double the sales.” The Thorn, Lewis’s most recent book, has sold 280,000 copies since its publication in September. Lewis herself has sold more than 13 million books in all.
Modeled on the bodice rippers that generations of women have read for escape, Amish romances follow familiar plotlines: An innocent girl, torn between a hot, dangerous boy and a cute, upstanding one, has to make a choice. Disapproving parents, difficult siblings, nosy neighbors -- not to mention the warring impulses of lust and restraint -- need to be wrestled with and vanquished.
But the best part is that in the bonnet books, passion is beside the point. The aspiration here, for the Amish heroine (and, by extension, her readers), is inner peace, a stable and cohesive community, and obedient children. Sex, if it occurs at all, happens offstage. “We’ll wait till our wedding day to lip-kiss,” says the blond (and bland) beau near the end of The Thorn. They won't even kiss on the page. More>>
