When she did leave the community again, it was David who picked her up in his truck. “In the meantime, David did not give up wanting to communicate with me,” she added. “I basically did not want to find out what would happen if I resisted,” she said, explaining that she then returned to her hometown for almost three years before she left again. While she was in Burlington, Furlong made plans to enroll in college courses and met David, the man she would later marry, whom she began dating in the winter of 1978.īut it wasn’t long before a vanload of her family and friends showed up unannounced at her front door, with full intent of returning her to the Amish community. ” `Bonnet Strings’ picks up pretty much where that one left off.” “The first book basically takes the reader to the point where I left the Amish for the first time,” Furlong explained. She headed for Burlington, a city she had only been introduced to in her history books, and secured her dream job as a waitress at a Pizza Hut. I’m thinking it’s time for the true stories to come out.” Saloma’s Storyįurlong, 56, left the security of her Amish community in Ohio at the age of 20. “There’s been so much out there about the Amish that’s just so false.

“I’m thinking that the next phase or the next genre might be those of us who have lived the life or are living the life of Amish or Mennonite writing our own story,” Furlong said. And that’s why the publisher has picked up Saloma Miller Furlong‘s latest book, “Bonnet Strings: An Amish Woman’s Ties to Two Worlds.”

They’ve been on a mission to publish such novels, which is why they backed books such as Harrisonburg actor Ted Swartz‘ book, 2012 title “Laughter Is Sacred Space,” and Friendly City-based author Shirley Hershey Showalter‘s 2013 memoir, titled “Blush,” last year. That is, fabricated stories relating to the Amish or plain Mennonite cultures, often written by authors not from one of those backgrounds and sometimes critiqued for lacking in accuracy.īut executives at Herald Press, the publishing branch of Harrisonburg-based Mennomedia, believe they’ve tapped into the next genre in Anabaptist literature: the memoir.

In recent history, so-called “bonnet fiction” has flourished.

Blush by Shirley Hershey Showalter