History, Real Life, and Faith
Can you imagine what Paris was like on Armistice Day in 1918? Delirious with joy would work as a description! Sobered, but relieved. Triumphant yet mourning. It was all those things and more. That chapter, the final one, was the easiest and most fun to write in A Poppy in Remembrance. 11 in the morning on the 11th of November,…
Read More
Why did six Christian authors write about WWI–the Great War? Bestselling novelists Carrie Turansky, Pepper Basham, Kate Breslin, J’Nell Ciesielski, Roseanna White, and Michelle Ule all released a WWI novel during 2018-2019. Why the Great War? For many reasons. Downton Abbey inspired several writers. Kate Breslin “My interest in WWI and the early 1900s was sparked a few years ago…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More