History, Real Life, and Faith
I wrote Biddy’s biography because of A Poppy in Remembrance. As I’ve recounted elsewhere, I spent several days researching Biddy and Oswald Chambers’ lives. Two intense days focused on the World War I period at Wheaton College, brought the two alive. As I wrote the novel, I knew Oswald would influence the storyline. What I did not anticipate was how…
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Celebrating A Poppy in Remembrance on launch day. The word “launch” truly describes what it means for a book to be published for the first time. Just as with a child, you send your “baby” off into the world to meet it on her own terms. I spent years writing, studying and traveling to make A Poppy in Remembrance an…
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How does a writer make real characters come alive in a novel? Very carefully. You do not want to misrepresent a historic figure. It was an interesting exercise to write intelligently and honestly about several World War I people in A Poppy in Remembrance. My real characters included Mary Lee, Winston Churchill, T.E. Lawrence, Black Jack Pershing, Oswald and Biddy…
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I used major themes taken from My Utmost for His Highest when I wrote A Poppy in Remembrance. They serve as the “backbone” of the story, and should not be obvious. But they provided me with a way of enriching the spiritual aspects of the book. In the novel, twenty-year-old Claire comes to a personal faith at the Bible Training…
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Africa missionary Sam Staniford’s connections to CT Studd and Oswald Chambers.
The Egyptian ANZAC troops and Oswald Chambers–an important relationship.