New Release & Book Review: TALES FROM PENNSYLVANIA
It’s no secret I’m a big fan of Michael Bunker as a writer and as a book marketer. After all, the man single-handedly created the sub-genre of Amish science fiction and then drove his book to bestseller status. With all that in mind, I was eager to get my hands on Tales from Pennsylvania, the anthology of stories set in Bunker’s world of New Pennsylvania.
I am happy report that editors Chris Pourteau and David Gatewood selected well their band of eleven writers to represent Mr. Bunker’s fictional universe. Even better, these authors did what great storytellers do best: they added to the original, making it richer, deeper, and even more satisfying.
Take Gelassenheit by editor and author, Chris Pourteau. On the face of it, it’s a story about oppression of the Amish by the Transport government, as told by Abram Brenneman. But for sharp-eyed readers who know of Pourteau’s fanfic pieces, Gettysburg and Susquehanna, the surname Brenneman will sound familiar. The term gelassenheit is a core precept of the Amish meaning “a willingness to subjugate the worldy desires of the individual to the needs of the community.” In this wonderfully constructed piece, you think you’re reading about the conflict of Amish morals and government intractability, but then you realize—at the very last minute–that you’re reading an origin story.
In The Barn That Hanna Built by Lesley Smith, we find hacker Hanna Strauss, forced out of the city to hide out among the Amish. In her city existence, Hanna was obsessed with coding the perfect country setting, but when she seeks refuge among the Amish, she finds she’s actually living inside that landscape. This story has a nice twist to it, and Smith has a visceral, detailed style that evokes vivid mental images in the reader.
Contrast that with Sisters of Solomon, by Kim Wells. Using diary excerpts from a member of the SOS, or Sisters of Solomon, insurrectionist group, the tale takes us through a first person account of the radicalization process from a heartbroken widow to a member of the resistance. Wells tells an interior story, threaded together by passages from Song of Solomon, as well as her main character's lyrical memories of her too-short time as a happy bride in a bucolic world. Along the way, you get treated to little gems like this one: “Once she brought us a bushel of tomatoes with barely any bugs, just a touch of yellow-green unripeness. If you smelled their tops, right where the vice pierced the fruit, it smelled like summer.”
If you’d like to raise your heart rate after Wells’s lyrical prose, I suggest you dip into I Am Still Here, by Nick Cole. Former Army man Cole drops into the cockpit next to The Jackal, a young ace fighting against evil Transport. But war takes a toll on Jackal, and with each “kill” in the air, a little piece of his soul gets shot away in the process. It takes a heartbroken Amish man, who’d lost his family in the last air battle, and the stillness of the simple life to help Jackal repair the damage to himself.
Tim Grahl makes his fiction literary debut in Protection. Grahl seeks to answer a straightforward question that lurks in the minds of all readers of Pennsylvania. Amos Troyer, the younger brother of main character Jed Troyer, starts the story as a gentle 14 year old. Decades later, when Jed wakes from his extended trip to New Pennsylvania, Amos is the feared leader of the TRACE rebel forces. What happened to Amos? Grahl’s answer is a heart-wrenching tale of personal loss.
Jennifer Ellis makes use of Pook Rayburn, another Pennsylvania favorite character, in Resistance. Ellis tells her story from the point of view of the most un-Amish perspective possible: Robin, a city-born and bred former exotic dancer and current owner of a strip club with her husband, Isaac. When Isaac, who was born Amish, suddenly decides to return to the AZ (Amish Zone)—in Canada, no less–Robin thinks it’s a joke. It’s not, but her husband isn’t telling her the whole truth, either. This “city mouse goes country” tale, has a bit of everything in it: gritty urban descriptions, lovely depictions of Amish life, and espionage underneath it all.
That’s just a sampling of a few of my favorites from this anthology of Amish sci-fi. As Michael Bunker notes on the cover of Tales from Pennsylvania: “I can think of few things more satisfying to me an as author than to learn that other authors want to write stories in a world I created.”
Satisfaction for you, Mr. Bunker, and for your readers.
David Bruns is the creator of the sci-fi series The Dream Guild Chronicles, and one half of the Two Navy Guys and a Novel blog series about co-writing the military thriller, Weapons of Mass Deception. He's also authored his own bit of PENNSYLVANIA fanfic, The Yesterday Adjustment.