The Alliance

April 11, 2016
In Petersheim’s dystopian religious tale, set in the near-future U.S., two very different people—an Old Order Mennonite and a hardened military pilot—are unexpectedly brought together. When Moses Hughes’s plane crashes in Leora Ebersole’s field in Mt. Hebron, Mont., her pacifist Mennonite community takes the injured pilot in, showing their usual hospitality as stories of widespread power outages trickle in from the neighboring Englischers. Moses’s theory about the reason for the outages leads to an uneasy alliance between the Mennonites and the Englischers stranded by the power outages in their area. Leora, forced to lead her family after her father’s desertion two years before, holds tightly to her faith and traditions. But the deteriorating culture around them brings danger to their doorstep, and Leora must wrestle with long-held convictions and fears. She and Moses walk an emotional tightrope as they develop romantic feelings for each other. This unusual dystopian work mixes hope and faith with fear and cynicism as Leora must determine whether her pacifism is merely adherence to her community’s collective belief or a personal, faith-based conviction as well. How valid is violence in defense of loved ones? Will her community stay true to their convictions and faith? Petersheim (The Outcast) focuses less on the outcome of the destroyed society and more on the internal conflict within the characters in this astute meditation on the intersection between belief systems and the politics of aggression.

May 15, 2016
Petersheim (The Midwife, 2014) tells a unique, inspirational, apocalyptic tale set in a Mennonite paradise. When an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effectively ends life as everyone knows it, Leora Ebersole's Mennonite community must band together with the Englischers stranded among them, including Moses Hughes, a pilot who crashed in Leora's fields when the EMP hit. The two join forces to protect her people's land and assets against outsiders turned desperate in the crisis. Although their approaches could not be more differentLeora is a pacifist and Moses is a trained fighterthe two find themselves answering life's big questions more and more similarly as they draw close. Their bond is tested, however, when Moses discovers a truth that could affect everything Leora believes about her family. Petersheim has written a novel of hope forged in unlikely circumstances and a romance sparked in the cold of despair. Readers of faith who have questioned their place in the world, who wonder what they might become if society's bounds no longer held them, will be enthralled.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)