THE CALLING - Suzanne Woods Fisher - One Free Book

A note from the author: I want you to know three things about The Calling. The first is it is different. A sticky topic is tackled: how the Amish deal with mental illness. But it's a light hearted book, too, that will make you grin, laugh, and feel sorry to come to the last page. An excerpt can be found HERE.

The second is that I'm heading out on a book tour this week! Join me if you live near any event! Details here. And if you're able, I'd be honored if you'd pick up a copy today-and tell your friends and family about it!

Third, watch my contest page beginning January 20th. I'm celebrating the release of The Calling with a great giveaway: TWO iPads, TWO Kindles, and TWO Nooks!

Welcome back, Suzanne. As an author, I know it takes a lot of people to birth each book. Who were the people involved in the birthing of this book, and what were their contributions?

Sounds like a stretch for an Amish novel … but this story was inspired by an 88-year-old African American dynamo named Mother Williams. She saw a need in her community for a soup kitchen and knew she could do one thing well—she could cook. So she started a once-a-week soup kitchen at age 77 (!) and is still going strong. After interviewing volunteers who worked alongside Mother Williams, I ended up creating five elderly Amish sisters in The Calling to do the work of one Mother Williams. Talk about an inspiring individual! Mother Williams doesn’t plan on retiring. She says she wants to keep serving God “until the day is done.” Imagine if we all shared her convictions to serve God in any way we can, for as long as we can. The world would be a different place.

That is so true. If you teach or speak. What’s coming up on your calendar?

I’m extremely excited to be one of the speakers at the Festival and Faith at Calvin College in April. Over-the-moon excited! Many other speakers of whom I am starstruck: Anne Lamott, Richard Foster, Luci Shaw.

 

If you had to completely start over in another place, where would you move, and why?

At this stage in my life…I would happily move to wherever my adult children are planted. (And where my grandchildren will be!)

If you could only tell aspiring novelists one thing, what would it be?

“Hangeth thou in there.” If you want it badly enough and work hard enough for it, your moment will come.

You’ve been asked to be in charge of a celebrity cruise. Who would you ask to take part, and why? (AS in what program, singers, etc. [it doesn’t have to be writing related])

I would probably invite established, awesome professional authors and have them teach Master classes in writing. The music would be a jazz quartet … quietly playing in the background. Maybe a brilliant guest speaker on marketing and promotion, just to ice the cake.

 

I’d sure like to be on that cruise. Now please tell us about the featured book.

Like many young adults, life hasn’t turned out for Bethany the way she hoped and planned. In The Letters (Book 1), she finds out her boyfriend isn’t who she thought he was—not by a long shot. In The Calling (Book 2), she is trying to figure out what to do with her life. Stay Amish or leave? Accept a date with that too-handsome-for-his-own-good Jimmy Fisher or heed warnings that he’s nothing but trouble?

Five elderly Amish sisters from the Sisters’ House sweep Bethany under their wing. Reluctantly, she helps the ancient sisters with their soup kitchen for the down-and-outers of Stoney Ridge. A little less reluctantly, she starts a community garden. The miracle of finding oneself while serving others begins in Bethany, until she is slipped some personal information from a sassy teenaged down-and-outer that shatters her world. 

Please give us the first page of the book.

As far as Bethany Schrock was concerned, this summer was hotter than a firecracker lit on both ends. A little rain would certainly be welcome, she thought, as she untied her stiff prayer cap strings and tossed them over her shoulders, but the heat wave held Stoney Ridge tightly in its grip. All the more reason to set to work in the cool of the basement of the Sisters’ House.

At the bottom of the basement stairs, she held the lantern up to gaze around the dusty, cobwebby basement, and blew out a puff of air. If it were even possible, there was more clutter down here than in the rest of the house. She’d been steadily trying to organize the Sisters’ House for weeks now and had barely made a dent. Sylvia, the youngest of the five elderly sisters of the Sisters’ House, had told her she was doing a fine job and they didn’t know how she worked so quickly. “You are a doggedly determined young lady,” Sylvia had said.

Bethany had smiled, pleased Sylvia was so pleased. She had always considered doggedness to be a rather unappealing characteristic, but it had been valuable at the Sisters’ House. “Thank you,” she told Sylvia. “It’s easy when you know how to organize things.”

The sisters, on the other hand, did not know how. They were in desperate need of someone with dogged determination after the deacon had gently reminded them they were overdue in taking a turn to host church. Overdue by years and years. They needed to get their house tidied up, first, they told him, giving him their sweetest smiles. And that’s where Bethany came in.

Jimmy Fisher had done the sisters a very great favor by suggesting they hire Bethany to organize their house. If it wouldn’t cause his big head to swell even bigger, she might even tell him so one day.

But she wouldn’t tell him how much she needed to work, to keep busy, to get her mind off the near shipwreck she had made of her life. It still galled her to think that just four weeks ago she was this close to running away with Jake Hertzler, only to find out he wasn’t the man he said he was. Not even close. He was a no-good, lowlife skunk, that’s what he was.

In the end, her stepmother Rose often reminded her, she hadn’t run off with Jake. Something deep down in her knew better, Rose insisted. Her grandmother, less forgiving in nature, had left a 1938 edition of A Young Woman’s Guide to Virtue on Bethany’s pillow, a not-so-subtle poke about her disastrous judgment in men. Bethany thought she might use it to start a fire.

Bethany carefully pushed and pulled boxes so she could carve a path to the small window. She needed fresh air in this stuffy, musty basement. Hands on her hips, she looked around and wondered where to begin.

The sisters had left for a quilting at Naomi King’s house this afternoon, which suited Bethany just fine. She much preferred working without them anywhere nearby. Just this morning, her younger sister Mim had asked if she minded working for such ancient ladies.

Mim was right about them being old. Ella, the eldest, was in her 90s. Sylvia, the youngest, was in her early 80s. Fannie, Lena, and Ada fell somewhere in between. But they were lovable sisters, spinsters, who had lived together all their lives.

No, Bethany didn’t mind their ages. What she minded was that they were so extraordinarily messy. Yes, it gave her a job to do and, yes, the sisters paid her well. But it was not an easy job. These old sisters saved everything. Everything!

The cleanout and organizing of the Sisters’ House could have gone faster but for two reasons. First was the sisters’ involvement. They were constantly rummaging through Bethany’s system of three boxes: keep, throw, giveaway. The sisters were particularly interested in the giveaway box. Somehow, nearly everything Bethany tossed into it was quietly removed and slipped into the keep box.

The second reason the cleanout job moved slowly was Bethany’s doing. There was prowling to be done, especially in the basement. Being her share of nosy, she took her time examining wondrous things she had never seen the likes of—treasure chests overflowing with fancy old clothes, ruffled parasols, lacy unmentionables. Who knew that these ancient sisters had an exotic past? How thrilling! How worrisome.

She took care to hide the unmentionables in the bottom of giveaway boxes. It would never do to have such things end up at a Sisters’ House yard sale. Word might get out that the sisters were fallen women. Unrepentant jack-a-dandies. She could just imagine the dour look on her grandmother’s face, sorting through a box of ladies’ whale-boned corsets. Next thing you knew, the old sisters would end up on the front row of church, kneeling for confession before the entire congregation, promising to mend their ways. How awful!

Well, never mind. The old sisters’ secrets would stay safe with her.

It was fascinating to sift through the lives of these eighty-plus-year-old women. There were old newspapers and musty books, boxes of clothing, old quilts, even an old diary. One box held little small bottles filled with liquid. Bethany hoped the bottles might be perfume, that she had found another delightful secret about the fallen sisters. But when she opened one, it smelled like medicine. Evil smelling, strong and sickly sweet.

She came upon a soft black leather trunk, packed underneath other boxes at the bottom in a corner of the basement. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. The leather straps were cracked and dry, the brass nails that held it together were black with tarnish. She tried to open it but the latch was jammed, so she found an old iron fireplace poker and pried the lid open. Bethany peered into the trunk and stood with a start. A coppery cold moved along her spine and the perspiration on her skin turned to ice. She’d never had a sensitive bone in her body, unlike her friend and neighbor Naomi King, who’d imagined seeing ghosts and angels and demons her whole life. But this . . . this!

Shootfire!

She backed toward the stairs, trembling. It would take a raging river to wash from her mind the sight of what was in that trunk. Human bones, including two skulls, with their empty sockets looking back at her. She hurried up the basement stairs, thinking of all the things she had to say to Jimmy Fisher to singe his tail feathers.

Where can we find you on the Internet?

I can be found at www.suzannewoodsfisher.com and love to hear from readers!

Thank you, Suzanne, for sharing your new book with us. I know all of my readers will want to know the rest of the story. As do I.

Readers, here are links to the book. By using one when you order, you help support this blog.

The Calling - Christianbook.com
Calling, The: A Novel (The Inn at Eagle Hill) - Amazon
Calling, The (The Inn at Eagle Hill Book #2): A Novel - Kindle

Christian Book Store

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