What Mennonite Girls Are Good for

WINNER - Iowa Short Fiction Award: John Simmons Short Fiction Award

In these eleven stories, a Mennonite minister’s daughter moves from a youthful, exuberant understanding of her family’s faith toward religious doubt. Stumbling comically at times, Ruthie navigates life with and without the rules in which she’s been raised. Always physical, often sexual, Ruthie’s search for personal truth leads her from missionary outposts in Paraguay and Brazil to Mennonite towns in northern Indiana and central Kansas. These stories consider how faith and identity intertwine, the cost of abandoning one’s cultural heritage, and the complicated longing for return.