View source for Singmaster, Elsie (1879-1958)

[[File:Elsie Singmaster profile circa 1920.jpg|thumb|right|''Elsie Singmaster, ca. 1920.<br/>Photo: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Singmaster Wikipedia'']]]
Elsie Singmaster Lewars (29 August 1879 – 30 September 1958) who wrote under her maiden name Elsie Singmaster, was an American author who wrote outstanding "local color" fiction with Eastern [[Pennsylvania (USA)|Pennsylvania]] as a major locale. Though she was Lutheran of [[Pennsylvania-German Culture|Pennsylvania-German]] stock, some of her works deal with the "plain people," including the Mennonites. Her novel ''I Heard of a River'' (1948) tells of the first Mennonite settlement in the early 1700s in what is today [[Lancaster (Pennsylvania, USA)|Lancaster]], Pennsylvania. Most of the short stories in her collection ''Bred in the Bone'' (1925) center around the [[Reformed Mennonite Church|Reformed Mennonites]]; a few deal with young [[Amish]] men. These characters and their problems Elsie Singmaster treats with sympathy and gentle, never derisive, humor. Her home was at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where her husband, Herald Lewars, was a professor at Gettysburg College. She was the author of nearly 350 short stories which appeared in literary journals and popular magazines and published 38 books. For their preservation and regional representation of Pennsylvania German culture, Singmaster's writings are still valued and also for their insights into another time and place in the American human experience.
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