Retelling the story of Ruth in a modern Mennonite Setting
Best-selling author Jolina Petersheim adds a new perspective to the story of Ruth in How the Light Gets In (Tyndale House), updating the setting to include an unexpected twist. Here she shares with us what inspired the new novel, how grief and loss can take place within the mundane of the day-to-day, and what she hopes readers will take away as her version of Ruth faces decisions that will speak to and into her character.
What inspired you to write How the Light Gets In?
When my firstborn daughter, now six, was a year old, we took a walk in Wisconsin on a cold fall day. Afterward, I envisioned a young mother coming there with almost nothing and how she would survive. Two years later, my husband’s uncle shared a newspaper article with me about a Wisconsin cranberry farmer who used old-fashioned equipment; that was when I knew the twist for the modern retelling of Ruth.
How do you expect the novel to resonate with your audience? What are you most excited for your readers to experience through reading this story?
How the Light Gets In will resonate with readers who find themselves struggling to maintain a healthy marital relationship in the wake of transition. And what life is exempt from transition? Ruth and Chandler’s journey, of choosing love even when the person they have chosen to marry has changed, will encourage readers to choose love as well. My utmost dream for this story is to strengthen marriages by offering an intimate look at both sides of that union. Also, being in the throes of young motherhood with three girls under six, I am passionate about encouraging women to pursue their creative gifts, so they can continue pouring back into their spirits, and from this refilling, they can continue to pour out.
What role does faith play in this story?
At the story’s opening, Ruth and Chandler have spent the past five years so focused on making a temporal difference in the world, their eternal perspectives have become opaque. After Ruth receives news of Chandler’s death, her world is turned upside down, and she understands how desperately she needs faith—the faith she’s neglected—to help her and her daughters survive such loss. Ruth’s heart finds healing while working the cranberry harvest with Elam, her husband’s cousin, who has a simple, steadfast faith that encourages her own.
Click through to find out why the novel is both “cautionary” and “redemptive”…