Heroine Interview from The Amish Nanny by Leslie Gould/Mindy Starns Clark

» Posted on Jul 15, 2011 in Blog | Comments Off on Heroine Interview from The Amish Nanny by Leslie Gould/Mindy Starns Clark

The Amish Nanny

The winners of last week are Abi with Raschelle Wurzer’s Beyond Prejudice, Cindy with Ronie Kendig’s Wolfbane, and Glynda with Terri Reed’s The Innocent Witness.

This week I’m hosting Stephanie Grace Whitson with A Most Unsuitable Match, Lisa Harris with An Ocean Away, and Leslie Gould and Mindy Starns Clark with The Amish Nanny. If you want to enter the drawings, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (July 17th) evening.

Interview with the heroine:

The Amish Nanny, by Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould

1. Ada Rupp, tell me the most interesting thing about you.

I’m a pretty typical Amish young woman in some ways—but in others I’m really not. For example, I didn’t find out I was adopted until I was twenty-four. That was quite a shock, but there was actually a hidden blessing. I have a birth sister, whom I love. (You can find out all about her in The Amish Midwife; if you haven’t read it, please do!) She is kind and spunky and honest and loves life. Getting to know her has been one of the greatest joys I’ve ever known!

2.  What do you do for fun?

The thing I love to do the most is teach. My cousin Zed says I have an “inner teacher.” She comes out at the most surprising times! I like to instruct people, no matter if they’re young or old or in between, about all sorts of things—including Amish ways and beliefs, which many people seem to find fascinating, for some reason.

3.  What do you put off doing because you dread it?

For a long time, because I had some health issues, I put off growing up or being active or living a normal life. But I’m over that now, both mentally and physically.

4.  What are you afraid of most in life?

For many years, I could tell my parents were keeping something important from me, and I (mistakenly) assumed their big secret had something to do with my fragile health.  Thus, I lived mostly on the “sidelines,” so to speak, terribly afraid of bringing on my death prematurely through my own actions.

A few months ago, however, I was given some new information about how to improve my health. I also learned what my parents’ big secret actually was, and as it turns out, it had nothing to do with my condition at all but instead was about the circumstances of my birth and the fact that I was adopted. Once I learned that, and as my health began to improve, that fear of endangering my life began to evaporate.

Now that I am feeling so much better, my biggest fear is that I’ll never be able to “catch up” on all the time I lost in the past because of my condition and my mindset about it. At 24, I know that I have experienced far less than many girls half my age. I’m afraid if I don’t do something drastic, very soon, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering “what if” about all that I missed.

5.  What do you want out of life?

There are two things I want out of life, actually three. To be a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Lancaster County, to marry a good man, and to be a mother. And, yes, there is a particular good man, a widower, I have in mind. Unfortunately, he seems to be considering someone else.

6.  What is the most important thing to you?

Right now, I’d say making my faith my own is the most important thing to me. I haven’t joined the Amish church yet. I plan to, but I’m not quite “there.”

7.  Do you read? If so, what is your favorite type of book?

I’m a voracious reader and love just about anything—biographies and histories, books about nature and geography. I’d have to say my favorite books have to do with travel—after reading about a place, I almost feel as if I’ve been there.

8.  If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I know this is a prideful to say, but I wish I were prettier. I would like to look more like my sister, to be honest. She’s very beautiful.

9.  Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?

I don’t have any inside pets, but we have lots of cows that I sometimes talk to. My favorite animal is my horse Rikki. I don’t ride him—he pulls my buggy. He’s a retired racehorse, and he and I both love to go fast.

10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?

I would go to Switzerland in the 1870s, right before my great grandmother immigrated to America. I long to know more about her, especially how, for the sake of religious freedom, she could leave her father and her beloved home in the Swiss countryside to start over in a new land, one that was completely foreign to her. I admire that so much, but I can’t say I fully understand how she found the strength to do it.