Mennonite Weekly Review

On my desk are The Secret (2009), The Longing (2008) and The Forbidden (2008), all by Beverly Lewis, published by Bethany House, $13.99.

Funk Wiebe

Time magazine reports that romance fiction, of which Amish-themed novels command a growing share, generates nearly $1.4 billion in sales each year. That number is rising. Beverly Lewis’ G-rated books, set among the Old Order Amish in Lancaster County, Pa., have sold more than 12 million copies.

Her novels are best sellers, but not because of hot, steamy romances. What is their appeal?

A subgenre of the Christian novel, Amish romances have a formula approach common to the romance genre. The heroine is usually female because women read most of these novels. In Amish romances, a young woman in her rumspringa (running around) years encounters a conflict in her relationship with the young man she has feelings for, but in the end is united with him in marriage.

In all romance novels the conflict necessary to sustain interest is often caused by forces outside the couples’ control. The Forbidden and The Longing are written with the background of a church division in the 1960s within the usually quiet world of the Amish in Lancaster Country.

A conflict occurred as church bodies struggled to define themselves when new teaching about assurance of salvation arose in their midst, as opposed to the traditional Amish view of having only hope of eternal life. To speak with confidence of having salvation is seen as pride among the Amish. The new thinking found many listeners, who were ready to start a new church.

In Lewis’ stories a rift occurs over this new theology — between parents and children, between friends and neighbors, and between boyfriends and girlfriends. In The Forbidden and The Longing, Nellie Mae Fisher loves an Old Order young man though she is drawn to the New Order group. His father forbids his son to marry anyone of the new persuasion or face being disinherited.

In The Secret, the mother of the main character suddenly withdraws, weeps and wanders around in the night because of a long-hidden secret. Her behavior threatens the main characters’ budding romance. She finally deserts her family.

Are the readers who devour these novels weary of torrid bedroom scenes that do not advance the plot or reveal character? In Amish romances, the reader will not find explicit sensual scenes, gratuitous violence, foul language or scantily clad women.

Instead, the reader is introduced to actual romance during courtship. In the Amish world, a young man in his dashing “courting buggy” actually courts a young woman with marriage and family as the goal. Courting is necessary because there is distance between them. Romantic encounters are chaste — no “lip kissing” before marriage.