Dear Reader,
When I was twenty-four years old, my first real job out of graduate school was to be an academic librarian for a small college in rural Knox County, Ohio. Knox County is right next to Holmes County, which has the largest Amish population in the world, and Knox County has a small Amish population of its own. It was common for me to see Amish buggies when I drove to and from work or to shop beside Amish families in the local grocery store. That experience inspired me to write A Plain Death and the future novels in the Appleseed Creek Mystery Series.
There are so many wonderful Amish novels in bookstores and libraries right now, but I hope you find A Plain Death to be a little different. First and foremost, it is a mystery novel. The novel centers around the death of an Amish bishop, who is killed in an auto-buggy collision. The protagonist, Chloe Humphrey, and her new former-Amish friends, Becky and Timothy Troyer, decide to investigate the case because Becky was the driver of the car. They must decide if the crash was an accident or perhaps murder.
Also, the novel may reveal something new about the Amish to you. In my series, I hope to show you how different the Amish are from order to order and district to district. There are many different Amish groups, and each group has its own rules. However, the heart of their culture is keeping their communities together. Most Amish don’t drive cars because they think it’s wrong to do so. They are afraid that if they were able to own their own cars, the community would splinter because motor vehicles make it easier for community members to move away from each other. It’s a difficult and sometimes peculiar balance that the Amish have with the modern world. I hope I captured the essence of that in my writing.
Above all, I hope you enjoy the story—that the characters make you smile, the mystery raises your suspicions, and the romance touches your heart.
Blessings & Happy Reading!
Amanda Flower