Author Guest Post: Laura Bickle + Giveaway

Top Ten Temptations for my Amish Heroine

By: Laura Bickle

Katie, the heroine of THE HALLOWED ONES, is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers are free to experience non-Amish culture before officially joining the church. My Amish heroine is a good girl with a great deal of quiet strength. But there are a few things that can cause her to stray from her straight-and-narrow path and experiment. Among them are:

10. Jeans. Plain women wear dresses that they’ve sewn themselves. Those dresses are fastened with straight pins, to conform to the Ordnung – the body of rules she’s grown up with.  Katie has seen the English (non-Amish) girls her age wearing jeans in the nearby town, and she’s curious to see what it would be like to own a pair. Would they make her look like a boy?

9. Makeup. Plain women don’t wear makeup – that’s considered a sign of vanity. But Katie’s wandered through the drug store and has seen the tubes of lipstick. She might be tempted to try some if she’s beyond the watchful eye of her parents and the community Elders.

8. Movies. In Chapter 1 of THE HALLOWED ONES, Katie has a newspaper page in her pocket, advertising a movie about dragons. She’s wanting to see what that looks like on the big screen.

7. Cosmopolitan magazine. Katie flips through this at the corner store, smelling the perfume samples and looking at the fashions. The women don’t look like any of the women she knows. Her parents would be none too pleased if she was to come home with a copy.

6. The public library. Katie’s had a library card for years, and she’s read pretty much everything she can get her hands on. Since Amish classroom education ends at eighth grade in favor of vocational training, she’s looked outside the schoolhouse for more information about everything from the angels to zebras.

5. Wonder Woman. Katie has a secret stash of Wonder Woman comic books. She’s fascinated by her background – how Diana grew up on an island shut off from the world of men. Wonder woman is both powerful and innocent, and Katie can’t get enough of her adventures.

4. Elijah. Elijah is the handsome boy Katie has grown up with, who she expects to marry someday. Elijah is something of a straight arrow. When the end of the world happens and he loses his brothers, he falls back on tradition. Hard. This really puts stress on his relationship with Katie, and Katie begins to question both him and the rules he’s following.

3. Coca-Cola. Katie has a weakness for Coca-Cola, and will sneak one whenever she gets the chance.

2. Alex. Alex is an injured man Katie finds outside the boundaries of her community. Katie brings him inside her barn to recover, but can’t be sure what kind of evil he’s bringing in with him. He’s an anthropology student in the outside world, and he both infuriates her and makes her consider ideas that she might not otherwise have encountered. His presence forces her to take risks, and she learns a great deal about herself and her own ethics in attempting to protect him.

1. The Outside world. There’s a city beyond Katie’s fence that she’s never seen. On her Rumspringa, Katie intends to travel there, to see what life is like beyond her small community. But now that the end of the world has happened, she may discover that there’s more evil beyond her fence than she ever could have imagined.

THE HALLOWED ONES

By Laura Bickle

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Graphia

Release Date: September 25, 2012

ISBN-13: 978-0547859262

If your home was the last safe place on earth, would you let a stranger in?
Katie is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers can get a taste of the real world. But the real world comes to her in this dystopian tale with a philosophical bent. Rumors of massive unrest on the “Outside” abound. Something murderous is out there. Amish elders make a rule: No one goes outside, and no outsiders come in. But when Katie finds a gravely injured young man, she can’t leave him to die. She smuggles him into her family’s barn—at what cost to her community? The suspense of this vividly told, truly horrific thriller will keep the pages turning.

"This is a book to make you fear the shadows--a horrifying and gruesome tale of faith, and things that blink red eyes in the night. I began reading in the daylight, and read on into the late hours, leaning close, biting my lip. I could not look away; I was obsessed. Katie is an unbreakable soul."
--Lauren DeStefano, New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of the Chemical Garden Trilogy

“What an eerily believable, unique story! I can’t stop thinking about it—or shivering.”
—Melissa Marr, New York Times best-selling author of the Wicked Lovely series

“Readers will find it hard to put down this suspenseful, scary, compulsively readable adventure…”
-Kirkus Reviews

- THE HALLOWED ONES is available from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Powell’s, and Books A Million.
- A free excerpt of THE HALLOWED ONES is available here: http://laurabickle.com/the-hallowed-ones/?action=excerpt
- For more info about Laura and her books, please visit her website at www.laurabickle.com. She’s also on Facebook and Twitter, usually exclaiming over cute cat pictures and nerdy things.

***GIVEAWAY***

To win your paperback copy of The Hallowed Ones do the following in the comments below: 

1. Your Email Address 

2. What's the first thing you would do if, like Katie, you lived a sheltered life and could now go wild? 

*Contest open to anywhere Book Depository ships! Ends October 30th at midnight!