News Flash!
Upcoming Review and Book Giveaway of Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets the Glittering World by Shirley Hershey Showalter
On Wednesday, September 25, I will be reviewing Shirley Hershey Showalter’s new memoir – Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets the Glittering World.
WHO IS SHIRLEY HERSHEY SHOWALTER?
Though Shirley and I both grew up Mennonite in the same county and in the same decade, our paths did not cross until I saw her website http://www.shirleyshowalter.com/ flashing across the screen in a class entitled What the Heck is a Blog? at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. I immediately recognized her name as Swiss Mennonite and probably of Lancaster County, PA origin. And sure enough, right on both counts. Since March 2013 we have become blogging pals, and I am thrilled to promote her book as the story of a life surprisingly parallel to mine, a story of derring-do!
DETAILS OF THE CONTEST:
WHAT: My review of Shirley Hershey Showalter’s memoir – Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets the Glittering World.
PLUS: One lucky commenter will win a copy of BLUSH.
WHEN: Wednesday, September 25, 2013
WHERE: Right here on Plain and Fancy Girl
And all you have to do is show up, read my review and leave a comment.
The giveaway will close one week later on Wednesday, October 2, 2013 at 12:00 midnight. I will announce the lucky winner here and by email.
I invite you to come by and enter. Feel free to invite all your reading friends!
Shirley Hershey Showalter, author of BLUSH: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World
I promise: you will be transported,says Bill Moyers of this memoir. Part Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, part Growing Up Amish, and part Little House on the Prairie, this book evokes a lost time, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, when a sheltered little girl with big dreams entered a family and church caught up in the midst of the cultural changes of the 1950s and `60s.
glittering worldand her desire for
fancyforbidden things she could see but not touch. The reader enters a plain Mennonite Church building, walks through the meadow, makes sweet and sour feasts in the kitchen and watches the little girl grow up. Along the way, five other children enter the family, one baby sister dies, the family moves to the
home place. The major decisions, whether to join the church, and whether to leave home and become the first person in her family to attend college, will have the reader rooting for the girl to break a new path. (Amazon Books)
Plain and Fancy 
I look forward to it!
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Read the review . . . comment . . . hope to win! The book could be yours, Patti. Who knows.
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This is awesome. Fancy that…you might even be distant cousins.
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We obviously came from the same settlements in Switzerland and then Germany. Actually, I think our ancestral lines are intertwined probably through marriage. Thanks for noticing!
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Marian Beaman, I like the word you used to describe the parallel lives you and Shirley Hershey Showalter had while you were growing up: the Middle English “derring-do” (durren – to dare + don – to do) as in daring deeds, heroic daring; a daring spirit or deed; boldness or bold action; daring to do.
Growing up in southeast Iowa where we had both Amish and Mennonite families 20 miles away in and around Kalona, I never heard the word. I asked my husband, who grew up near an Amish settlement around Jamesport, Missouri if he had, and he also had not.
I am looking forward to reading your review of Shirley’s book Blush. And I want to read your book, Plain and Fancy.
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It’s nice to hear from you again, Barbara, and like the clarification of the “derring-do” phrase. It’s a word that came to mind when I read of Shirley’s high-spirited adventures in her memoir.
At the moment, Plain and Fancy is the name of my blog. It’s not a book yet, but who knows!
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It sounds like a great book. You had me at Mennonite in a Little Black Dress; I LOVE that book! (Also the sequel, Does This Church Make Me Look Fat?) I’m game for any book that compares favorably to Rhoda Janzen’s writing!
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Bill Moyers, who reviewed the book, says simply, “You will be transported.” Enough endorsement for any writer . . . or reader in my opinion. Thanks for your enthusiastic comment, Rebecca.
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