I heard recently that at least among one segment of the Christian reading population, Amish fiction is selling big. Apparently during slippery moral and economic times, it’s comforting to know that a character can find adventure in vegetables, love, and horse-drawn buggies. Forgive me if I’m wrong since I haven’t read any such stories lately, but the thought of combining all three in a plot sequence does seem riveting.

The marketers who weigh in on stuff like this must know more than I do. It wouldn’t be the first time that I missed the cut on art trends. If I had been one of the culture-makers this year, Lady Gaga, Bruno, and skinny jeans would’ve been kept out of our collective consciousness. So much money lost forever, I know.

So I found it interesting when I read an interview with Yann Martel, a Canadian writer and philosopher who makes this statement: “But if I project, Christians—part of this is based on my personal experience, and part of it is based on my intuition—don't read fiction. The Bible is enough for them. Jesus is enough for them. That otherworldliness of the Bible stimulates their imagination enough. Ardent Christians are not novel readers . . .”

Your new novel The Forecast sort of defies artistic labeling. You don’t classify it as Christian fiction, but the secular markets don’t know what to do with it. How would YOU define it? 

It’s sort of like asking a musician what kind of music he plays. I didn’t set out to package this book as a commercial enterprise. I’m a storyteller whose non-negotiable relationship with Jesus influences how I see the world. It’s as simple as that. If you really want to know what sort of thematic storyline it follows, I guess I could say Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors meets Kate Chopin’s The Awakening meets Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. On top of that, I called it a “counterfeit memoir” because the main character has such a strong confessional voice. Go figure.