Amish Romance Novels Fulfill Your Deepest Hand-Holding Desires

Apparently young Amish lovers are the new abstinent vampires. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday Amish romance novels, lovingly known as "bonnet books," are all the rage.

The books, written by non-Amish writers, are aimed at a mainstream audience. But Ms. Woodsmall researches her stories among the Pennsylvania Amish, and she has a loyal Amish following.

The plot of her 2006 novel, "When the Heart Cries," revolves around Hannah, a young Amish woman who falls in love with a Mennonite and hides her plans to marry him from her strict parents. The lovers struggle to overcome the cultural divide, and actually kiss a couple of times in 326 pages: "His warm, gentle lips moved over hers, and she returned the favor, until Hannah thought they might both take flight right then and there. Finally desperate for air, they parted."

"I can't stop reading them," said Mary Ann Blank, an Amish woman with a wide smile and graying hair she wears neatly parted under her prayer cap. She clutched her signed copy of the third book in Ms. Woodsmall's "Sisters of the Quilt" series, published by WaterBrook Press, a Random House imprint. "I usually better not start in the morning because then I sit around too long," she added.

Bonnet books have sold millions of copies nationwide and a representative for Barnes & Noble told the WSJ that Amish novels account for 15 of the chain's top 100 'religious fiction' titles. "It's almost like you put a person with a bonnet or an Amish field in the background and it automatically starts to sell well," she said.

We'd be lying if we said we weren't at least a little tempted to pick up a copy. Oh, temptation!

[WSJ via Vulture]