Rachel Yoder on a Mennonite Childhood and a Story About the Devil

Your story “The Promise” follows a couple of days in the life of an eight-year-old girl named Birdie, who is growing up in a Mennonite community, in the nineteen-eighties. Her parents are away, and she is staying with her aunts and her grandmother, about to start second grade. What inspired the story, and what makes these two days in Birdie’s life so important?In “The Promise,” Birdie’s aunt Miriam tells her a story about the Devil and a typewriter. My aunt Clara also told me a story about a devil and a typewriter when I was little, but all I retained were those two details. I couldn’t remember what happened in the story, so I decided to write my own version. I think it was so peculiar, and also incredibly fun, that Clara told me this story. Did she believe it had actually happened? I’ll n