Regional author tackles taboos with Amish romance novels

STRONGSVILLE, Ohio — When romance novelist Shelley Shepard Gray first arrived in Ohio, she found herself at a crossroads.

After several moves across the country with her husband, she was ready to stop teaching sixth grade.

Then, her husband encouraged her to take drafts of the novels she’d been working on to a Cincinnati-area meeting of the Romance Writers of America, where writers get together to discuss writing and publishing their work.

“It was eye opening,” she said. “I met so many men and women that, they had a variety of jobs, but they just really wanted to publish their book.”

Gray sold her third manuscript and has been working ever since, with more than 120 books under her belt. Her most recent is Unforgiven , about a pair of outcasts finding love in their Amish community.

Now located in Strongsville, Ohio, just south of Cleveland, Gray writes full-time. Having lived around the country, she enjoys the strong readership fostered by Ohio’s library systems — not to mention the Toledo Zoo.

“It’s one of my favorite places ever. I just think it's beautiful,” Gray said.

The Amish

About half of Gray’s work is Amish romance, religious novels starring Amish characters but often written by non-Amish evangelical Christians.

In 2004, Gray was writing for the well-known romance publisher Harlequin, but when it became clear it wasn’t a good fit, she took her agent’s advice to write a historical Western.

While her work received interest, it received even more rejections. Finally, an editor from HarperCollins reached out with an idea. Why not write Amish romance?

HarperCollins thought the “Amish thing was going to get big,” said Gray, and they knew she could tell a story.

“I happened to be at the right place at the right time,” Gray said. “I’m grateful and still a little bit surprised that I've been able to have a career that’s lasted so long.”

The editor also liked that she lived in Ohio, in a small town north of Cincinnati called Loveland.

It “always makes me smile, because it’s just like, someone from New York or California, you know, do they think buggies are just wandering all around the city?” Gray said. “But it just so happened that I did at the time live an hour from the Amish community.”

Through her church, Gray reached out to someone who had been raised Mennonite, and she connected Gray with several members of the Amish community.

For Gray, it’s important that every character feels like they could be your next-door neighbor, said Gray, especially when you’re writing about the Amish.

She has visited Amish homes, attended Amish weddings, and counts members of the community among her friends.

“It would be hard to write the books I do without having that comfort level writing about the Amish,” Gray said. “Those connections and those relationships have just enriched the stories that I tell.”

Like the Old Order Amish, as they are formally known, Mennonites and the lesser-known Hutterites come from Anabaptist Protestant Christian traditions, which trace their roots to the 16th century’s Radical Reformation and a belief that only those old enough to choose their faith should be baptized.

While some Mennonite sects are outwardly indistinguishable from mainstream Protestant communities, others resemble the Amish, whose belief in protecting their traditions from temptation manifests outwardly in the plain dress, rural lifestyle, and limited use of technology they are well-known for.

Connections and disconnections

For fans of the genre, Amish romance allows readers to disconnect from an increasingly digital world.

“There’s this sense of modern life being really fast and technologically connected,” said Professor Kristen Rudisill, an instructor for BGSU’s department of popular culture.

By contrast, Amish romance lets readers experience a fictionalized world full of “romance and that nostalgia for the past, and for a simpler, more connected life focused on family and friends and people rather than dating apps,” said Rudisill, also director of BGSU’s Asian studies program.

Some Christian women are drawn to the way the Amish express their faith through daily living. The genre can serve as religious escapism, allowing readers to live vicariously through the Amish for a faith-based way of life that is difficult to replicate.

Amish novels are also a reliable source for clean romance.

Unlike explicit films, books, and other forms of media, “here we have lovers who are just simple and pure and moral and innocent,” Rudisill said, with storylines centering chaste heroines.

Audiences shouldn’t take the simplicity and happiness presented in Amish books at face value. Like all fiction, Amish romance novels portray a particular view of these communities to satisfy their readership.

“Everyone’s looking for something to just put themselves in a different world,” Gray said. “One gal, years ago ... she kinda looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Shelley, I want to be Amish in one of your books,’” where everything works out and the world really is slower paced.

A simple, clean life doesn’t preclude complex characters and emotions.

Gray’s recent suspense romance novel, Unforgiven , takes place in Kentucky’s Crittenden County, which has an Amish population of around 600.

“When I first visited there, I just thought, this is so different. There’s the colors, it’s all very kind of dark, there’s creeks running around. It’s isolated,” Gray said. “It was an area on the edge.”

Then, Crittenden County was just coming out of the 2007 recession. People were struggling across the community, including many of the Amish.

This struggle is reflected in Unforgiven ’s protagonist, Tabitha Yoder, who has committed a taboo in her close-knit Amish community by divorcing her physically abusive husband. Over time, she connects with ex-con Seth Zimmerman, whose background has kept him similarly isolated.

One of their biggest hurdles is reintegrating into their community — but while their Amish neighbors are initially wary, they still love and want to connect with Tabitha and Seth, Gray said.

“People from all walks of life are human, and just because someone is Amish doesn't mean that they are not without flaws,” Gray said. “A lot of characters in the book have a little bit of a growth spurt to do.”

This includes the protagonists, whose isolation is partially self-inflicted.

“They both had to realize that they had to forgive themselves as much as seek forgiveness from others,” Gray said.

Fans of Gray’s work can find her on Facebook, where she hosts a private group called Shelley Shepard Gray’s Buggy Bunch. Meeting fans is personal for her.

“I write books for readers, and I am thrilled when I get to meet them in person and I’m thrilled when I see them online. In a lot of ways, they’ve become close friends.”

Gray’s next book, Unforgotten will be released in November. Unforgotten centers on two women, one Amish, one not, as their larger community deals with the threat of a deadly stalker.

Writing Amish novels is “a nice way for me to spend my days,” said Gray.

“I love when I'm working on an Amish book ... even say, a book like Unforgiven where everything that happens isn’t all that lovely,” Gray said.