News release
July 12, 2017
Plain Mennonite reveals her life as Anything but Simple
Educator offers first-hand account in new memoir
HARRISONBURG, Va.—What is it really like to be a single, plain Mennonite woman in today’s society? It may seem like the simple life, but Lucinda J. Miller would tell you it is more complicated than it looks. The young schoolteacher gives a first-hand account of her “Plain” life in a new memoir Anything but Simple: My Life as a Mennonite (Herald Press, July 25 2017).
Lucinda J. Miller wears long dresses and a prayer covering, like her grandmother, and she knows a lot about cooking and making do with what you’ve got. But she uses a cellphone and posts status updates on Facebook. Miller details her struggle between the two worlds, plain and modern, with honesty, revealing a world few outsiders will ever see.
“If not a completely simple world, ours is at least a safe one,” Miller says. “It is only when I step outside my safe Mennonite world and into larger American culture that life gets screwy and confusing.”
With a saucy tongue and a roving curiosity about the world, Miller details her rich church tradition, lively family life, inner struggles, and longings for a meaningful future within her Mennonite faith. The book includes “A Day in the Life of the Author” and “FAQ about the Amish and Mennonites”.
“In a charming, folksy style, Lucinda Miller strips away the layers of gloss that have been applied to conservative Mennonites and Amish in unrealistic romance novels and paints an accurate word picture of real Mennonite life,” says author Romaine Stauffer.
Lorilee Craker, New York Times bestselling author of Money Secrets of the Amish writes, “Lucinda J. Miller is the kind of writer readers dream of: engaging, literary, and openhearted.”
Anything but Simple is book 5 in the Herald Press Plainspoken series, launched in light of Amish novels and television shows which offer their own accounts of Amish and Mennonite life. Some of these messages are sensitive and accurate, but many are flat-out wrong. Through Plainspoken, readers can learn what Amish, Mennonite, and Hutterite life looks and feels like—from the inside out.
Lucinda J. Miller is a writer, teacher, blogger, and member of a conservative Mennonite community in Wisconsin. She teaches elementary school at the Sheldon Mennonite Church, and her writing has appeared in Daughters of Promise and Red Cedar Literary Journal. Her children’s book, The Arrowhead, is forthcoming from Christian Light Publications. Connect with her at www.lucindajmiller.com.
To schedule an interview with Lucinda Miller, contact LeAnn Hamby at (540) 908-3941 or [email protected]. To watch a video of Lucinda telling about writing this book, check: https://youtu.be/-QOky2ln074
To order the book, find it online at various retailers, your local bookstore, and at the Herald Press store or by calling 800-245-7894.
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