Q & A with Cindy Woodsmall and Erin Woodsmall

Q&A with Cindy Woodsmall & Erin Woodsmall,

Authors of The Christmas Remedy: An Amish Christmas Romance

(October 23, 2018; WaterBrook)

Quotes from book included.  

1.      

Tell us about your new Christmas novella, The Christmas Remedy.

Since losing her father a decade ago to a preventable illness, Holly Zook has dedicated her life to improving health care for her Old Order Amish community as a pharmacy technician. Her bishop has not only allowed her to work at Greene’s Pharmacy, but he’s supported her furthering her education so that she can be an excellent source of help to her people. As kind and understanding as her bishop is, she can’t hold this position and follow the natural order of courting or marrying. When a set of unusual circumstances in the pharmacy cause all paperwork to go missing for a patient and government regulations will cause their doors to close forever if they don’t resolve the issue, Holly has to reach out to Joshua Smucker, the one man whose presence tempts Holly to give up her calling. Can the two deny their feelings and succeed in saving the pharmacy?

2.      The main character, Holly Noelle Zook, was named so perfectly for the Christmas theme in the book. How do you select the names of your characters?

Cindy: I have a roster of hundreds of different verified Old Order Amish names, and I often go through that list when looking for character names. I try to stick to the list of verified Amish names, but once-in-a-blue moon when something special happens at a character’s birth that would cause a real-life Amish family to choose a name outside of their traditional names, I’m open to it.

Erin: I wanted to give the main character a Christmas-themed name because she was born on Second Christmas. It would’ve been a fun and festive thing for her parents to name her Holly Noelle since she was born on Second Christmas, which is an Amish tradition of celebrating Christmas two days. I can relate to naming a child because of the impact of Christmas—my third child was born three days before Christmas and his middle name is Shepard, to harken to the shepherds who came to see Jesus.

3.      Greene’s Pharmacy—the old-timey drugstore on the cover and where Holly works as a pharmacy tech—is so charming! What inspired the look and feel of it?

Cindy: Several things merged together. Erin had worked in a small, independent pharmacy in college, and I have wonderful memories from my own life of being in small pharmacies with their wood floors, friendly workers, and beautiful window displays. Erin and I had visited Shippensburg, Pennsylvania together, which the fictional town of Raysburg is based on, and all of that combined inspired a lot of how Greene’s is depicted on the cover and in the story. It was easy to imagine this quaint pharmacy on a corner in old town, near a field where the local Amish would park their horses and buggies.

4.      What do you love about writing Amish fiction?

Erin: Amish fiction is an escape to a completely different culture that lives in our midst in America. The differences (and similarities) they have to us Englischers are fascinating. With this book being a Christmas setting, we were able to explore a few Amish Christmas traditions, which was lots of fun to write about.

Cindy: The Amish are a remarkable people, and they give up a lot for the betterment of the community as a whole. I love exploring what works and doesn’t work—despite the amount of effort devoted to making the lifestyle work. It’s encouraging and realistic to understand how much our lives are impacted by the pros and cons of modern society, even when we devote great effort toward not being molded by it.

5.      What do you hope readers take away from this book?

Cindy: We hope readers will feel the joy and warmth of Christmas, and we think they will be encouraged by Holly’s hope and optimism toward bettering her community as she navigates the expectations and boundaries of a faith-filled life.

6.      What can you tell us about what you’re working on next?

We’ve written another Christmas novella with some of the same settings and characters as The Christmas Remedy. Each novella is a standalone, but readers will be able to catch glimpses of Holly’s life while watching her little sister, Ivy, meet the challenges and satisfaction of finding out who she is and what she really wants out of life. For Ivy what she’s pursuing with all her heart turns out to not be what she truly wants, but giving up those pursuits is a huge sacrifice.