Today’s Post by Ellen Marie Wiseman, author of THE PLUM TREE | @EllenMarieWise

We’ve got a copy of THE PLUM TREE up for grabs today. Just leave a comment on this post and you’ll be entered.

Ellen Marie Wiseman

Update: the winner of this giveaway is Faith Hope & Cherry Tea. She has been notified by email. Thanks to everyone who entered! Check back soon for more giveaways!

When it comes to love during a time of war, there are millions of stories waiting to be told. In my novel, The Plum Tree, a poor, young German woman, Christine Bölz, falls in love with Isaac Bauerman, the son of her wealthy Jewish employer, in Nazi Germany on the eve of WWII.

When I wrote The Plum Tree, I could have focused on any number of family stories as the foundation for my plot.  My grandparents’ story sounds straight out of a romantic movie—“Devoted husband and father of three is drafted into the German Army during WWII and sent to the Eastern front, where he is captured and sent to a POW camp. For two years his family has no idea if he is dead or alive, until he shows up on their doorstep one day.”

In the photo taken before my Opa is sent off to fight, my grandparents are smiling as they pose with my mother and uncles. I often wonder what was going through their minds at the time. Did they worry that this could be the last time they would be together? Did they wonder if the war would come to their small village and threaten their children’s lives?

During the four years Opa was gone, Oma repaired damaged military uniforms to bring in a small income. She stood in ration lines for hours on end, made sugar out sugar beets, and bartered beechnuts for cooking oil. She cooked on a woodstove, made clothes out of cotton sheets, raised chickens and grew vegetables to keep her children fed. Under the cover of night, she put food out for passing Jewish prisoners and listened to illegal foreign radio broadcasts—both crimes punishable by death. She put blackout paper over the house windows so the enemy wouldn’t see their light and, night after night when the air raid sirens went off, ran down the street to hide with her terrified children inside a bomb shelter.

I could have based the story on my maternal great grandparents, who survived WWI only to have my great-grandfather killed in WWII while trying to save the family home during an air raid. A burning wall from a neighboring barn fell on top of him, and my great-grandmother was severely burned trying to save him.

I could have based the book on my mother, who, after reading American magazines left behind by occupying Allied soldiers, took a ship to America alone, at the age of twenty-one, to marry an American soldier she barely knew.

These stories and more were the inspiration behind The Plum Tree. But by inventing the love story between Christine and Isaac, I was able to tell them all. Imagine my surprise when, after I named my main character Christine, my mother told me that my great-parents’ names were Christine and Christian. I guess it was meant to be!

Ellen Marie Wiseman was born and raised in Three Mile Bay, a tiny hamlet in Northern New York. A first generation American, Ellen has traveled frequently to visit her family in Germany, where she fell in love with the country’s history and culture. A mother of two, Ellen lives peacefully on the shores of Lake Ontario with her husband and three dogs.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

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Today we introduce a new theme that will take the place of our beloved Literary First Love series. We promised new things for 2013 and part of that is taking a closer, more personal look at the story behind the novels we feature here on She Reads. We are convinced that every story, at its heart, is true–whether it be inspired by historical events, drawn from the life of its author, or ripped from the headlines. So for the remainder of this year we will ask our guests to tell us something true about the book they have written.

Up first is Lisa O’Donnell, author of The Death Of Bees. We’ve got a copy of the novel up for grabs today, so leave a comment to be entered.

Lisa O’Donnell

Update: the winner of this giveaway is Elisabeth. She has been notified by email. Thanks to everyone who entered! Check back soon for more giveaways!

I remember this black and white picture of my father. He was 17 years old at the time and on the back of milk float. He was a delivery boy. His arms wide open, laughing at the camera, his whole life in front of him. A year later he was married to my mother. She was 16 years of age and about to have his baby. She was wearing a purple dress. There are no pictures of that. They had eloped if you want to be romantic about it or they had simply run from all good advice and direction. Maybe there wasn’t any for these teens and they were teens. Every one assures me there was plenty. My mother assures me there was nothing but anger and disappointment and who wouldn’t have run from that. Children generally do.

My parents were so very young and like Izzy and Gene they were clueless, careless and often times neglectful.  It’s a sad thing for a child to become trapped in someone else’s frustrated youth but this is how it was for my sister and I and it’s how it is for a lot of children growing up. They see too much and before their time.

I wrote The Death of Bees for all children forced to take control of their lives but I wanted to show their strength despite the absence of childhood. I also wanted to write about bravery, we live in a world where children are also courageous and maybe it’s unfortunate the things they endure to know such courage but it’s how it is sometimes. I created all kinds of challenges and dangers for Marnie and Nelly to overcome and they do, lots of children do, though the truth is they shouldn’t have to.  I gave Marnie and Nelly intelligence to give them a future, Lennie to love them and Vlado to watch over them as my own grandparents watched over my sister and I.  I wonder sometimes what would have happened to us if they hadn’t. I’m so grateful they did. It was the light at the end of the tunnel.

Today is Christmas Eve.
Today is my birthday.
Today I am fifteen.
Today I buried my parents in the backyard.
Neither of them were beloved.

Marnie and her little sister, Nelly, are on their own now. Only they know what happened to their parents, Izzy and Gene, and they aren’t telling. While life in Glasgow’s Maryhill housing estate isn’t grand, the girls do have each other. Besides, it’s only a year until Marnie will be considered an adult and can legally take care of them both.

As the New Year comes and goes, Lennie, the old man next door, realizes that his young neighbors are alone and need his help. Or does he need theirs? Lennie takes them in—feeds them, clothes them, protects them—and something like a family forms. But soon enough, the sisters’ friends, their teachers, and the authorities start asking tougher questions. As one lie leads to another, dark secrets about the girls’ family surface, creating complications that threaten to tear them apart.

Written with fierce sympathy and beautiful precision, told in alternating voices, The Death of Bees is an enchanting, grimly comic tale of three lost souls who, unable to answer for themselves, can answer only for one another.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

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Today’s post by Debbie Thomas from our sister blog, Novel Matters | @NovelMatters

I know what I like. I’ve been reading for 40…ish years, so yes, I should know by now what floats my boat when it comes to books.  Strong characters, authentic motivations, deep and worthwhile themes that resonate with me as a reader and settings as character that make me loathe to leave at the end.  Where do I consistently find these books? If there were a section so labeled in bookstores, I would camp out on their shores.

But there is no such shore. So, I cast my nets wide in the stacks of new releases or trawl musty secondhand stores for well-thumbed books. Dog-eared corners don’t lie – they have a reader’s stamp of urgency about them.

Occasionally, I reel in a surprising catch.  Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and left me running breathless through the stacks.  His even darker book, The Angel’s Game, had me cowering under the covers with a booklight into the early hours of the next workday and thanking God for people of courage. Flavia de Luce pulled me onto the back of Gladys (her bike) to race through Bishop’s Lacey for poisons. I promptly downloaded her next three books on my Kindle at the end (thank you, Alan Bradley).  The unabridged version of Jane Eyre left me aghast at what incorruptible spiritual truths had been gutted for word count and brevity in the version I’d read early on. I tasted the desperation and joys of a New York slum in Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I laughed open-mouthed at Green Shadows, White Whale. Who knew Ray Bradbury could turn writing a screenplay for Moby Dick into a thing of hilarity?

So, yes, I love the heftiness of velum and cloth cover in my hand, the knowing scent of old type and fuzzed edges of well-worn books, the cover photo that stirs the waters of imagination, the lure of a title that befuddles, the quick catch of a downloadable world.

I never want to be so sure of what I like that I steer away from unknown waters.  What have you read that surprised you?

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

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Today’s post from Debbie Thomas of our sister blog, Novel Matters | @NovelMatters

An interesting thing happened on my way back from a family reunion a few weeks ago. At the end of a very long five hour flight between Baltimore and San Diego, a passenger bolted from his seat as we were landing, sprinted to the front, grabbed the door handles and yelled, “Let me off this plane! I have to get off the plane!”

Oh yeah.

Two male flight attendants tackled him and pinned him down as we all watched, dumbfounded.  It seemed like an eternity before the wheels finally touched the runway, but in reality, it took only moments.

What goes through your mind when stuff like this happens?  Initially, you can’t really believe what you’re seeing because you have no frame of reference for it.  It’s not every day that someone goes haywire on a flight and tries to get off before the plane has landed.  Fellow passengers glance around at each other, just as startled and nervous and disbelieving as you, seeking some kind of verification that it’s really happening.

It wasn’t until I’d disembarked and medicated myself with a white chocolate mocha that the reality of it set in.  It could have turned out so differently if… no, we’re not going there.   But I wouldn’t be a writer, if at some point I didn’t shamelessly wonder how I could use this in a story.  Most writers would.

Digging through the rubble of life gives stories authenticity.  As writers, we often process our own experiences through the thoughts and actions of our characters. Sometimes these experiences provide snapshots of what makes people tick. Sometimes it’s a way for writers to make sense of life.

Here are some things I stored away in my inner journal:

• The young man on the plane didn’t struggle after he was tackled.  He grew docile and cooperative immediately.  Had he been subdued or was he biding his time?
• He looked like any other 20-something in shorts and a t-shirt. He could have been my son…or yours.  Tragically innocent or understatedly evil?
• The woman beside me in the aisle seat said that if she’d known he was coming, she would have stuck out her foot to trip him. It brought out her inner ninja.
• Several passengers were gracious and wondered if he had mental health issues, rather than making assumptions of malicious intent.
• The young man was barefooted.  The security officer found his flipflops at his seat. If he’d been intentional about causing harm, wouldn’t he have slipped his feet into his shoes before running to the front? It seemed more likely that he panicked and reacted to some turbulence.
• The whole incident seemed to go on forever because all the window shades were drawn to keep out the heat and we had no idea how close we were to landing.  I remember thinking (praying!) and trying to will the plane to touch down.
• It occurred to me how odd that all three flight attendants were brawny males.  When does that ever happen? In fiction, it would sound contrived, but in reality it was ordained, I think.
• Even the babies and little children were quiet. There was a moment of silence – a pause in the universe – before people started whispering and questioning.

What I observed in the reaction of such a large group of people to this situation was story fodder.  I saw how a simple thing like altering the physical setting (having the shades drawn, adding some turbulence) can disorient the protagonist, slow down time and heighten suspense.  How one person can find her inner ninja while another sympathizes with a potentially volatile and dangerous character.  How something as simple as shoes left behind can suggest the difference between spontaneous or premeditated actions, a confused soul or a scoundrel.

Every writer makes use of personal experiences, but if we fail to look past the obvious event and dissect the nuances of the scene and the reactions of those involved, we may miss the chance to incorporate them into story.

As a side note, when I had time to consider it all, I was deeply moved and grateful for the grace shown to us all on that flight.  And I sent an email to the airline commending the flight attendants for the quick response.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

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Today’s post by Bonnie Grove at our sister blog Novel Matters| @BonnieGrove @NovelMatters

A recent chat with a friend:

Me: What are you reading?

Friend: Uh. . . well. . .

Me: Life is too busy to read for fun these days, eh?
Friend: Uh. No. It’s just that . . .

Me (my Spidy-senses tingling): What? Oh-my-gosh you’re not reading smut and are ashamed to tell me, are you? (I said this jokingly. I’m married to her pastor, and while I often forget that the world views me as “The Pastor’s Wife”, oddly, the world does not.)

Friend: No. Not smut! It’s just that what I read probably isn’t up to your standards.

Ugh.

My standards? Do I have standards? Should I get me some? How exactly does a person go about acquiring standards of reading?

A quick peruse of the books piled beside my bed (this is not staged, I’ve just gone to my room and listed the books I see on my bedside table):

• The Harbrace Anthology of Poetry
• Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into History
• Small Wonder, essays by Barbara Kingsolver
• No Compromise, the life story of Keith Green, by Melody Green
• The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, edited by R.V. Cassill
• Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light: the private writings of the “Saint of Calcutta”, edited by Brian Kolodiejchuk.
• Abba’s Child, by Brennan Manning
• Inhabiting the Cruciform God, Kenosis, justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology, by Michael J. Gorman
• How to Write a Sentence, and how to read one, by Stanley Fish
• My personal writing journal by me (filled with bits of odd gibberish)
• Good Poems, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor
• The Norton Introduction to Literature, (fourth edition)
• The Forgotten Waltz, by Anne Enright (library book—Please, Lord, help me remember to take it back. Fines piling up.)
• Stein on Writing, by Sol Stein
• Comeback Churches, by Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson
• A Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L’Engle
• Roget’s college Thesaurus (huh?)
• The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English, Selected by Margaret Atwood & Robert Weaver
• The Man in the Shed, by Lloyd Jones (library book—must keep track)
• The Gathering, by Anne Enright (library book—should attach beeper similar to the locator function on my cordless phone)
• A magazine called Leadership (this issues is entitled: Dark Nights of the Soul)
• The Harbrace Anthology of Drama
• The Norton Anthology of Poetry

Two things are clear: I have too many books burdening my bedside table. And secondly, my books aren’t about a personal “standard” of reading, but are a refection of who I am.

Reading is so personal.

I’m a student of writing (anthologies of literature, poetry, drama, books on writing), a pastor’s wife who has more than a passing interest in what her husband does for a living (explains the theology books, and magazine), a soul out searching in the world (Manning, Mother Teresa), a student of psychology (hence the leaning toward dark, introspective, Irish writers), and am pressed for time (short stories galore), and a kid at heart (Uncle John’s, Madeleine “L’Engle).

Oh, and they have books for sale at Value Village for, like, practically free.

So, here’s the thing about my friend’s impression that I have a ‘standard’ of reading that is somehow higher than hers—it’s just not true. Different, sure. Higher? I don’t even know what that means.

We live in a critical culture. Micro-managing backseat drivers abound. We’re conditioned to compare every facet of our lives with every facet of other people’s lives. Comparison is the thief of joy.

Reading is so joyful.

That feeling that comes over you when you crack the spine of a novel you’ve been looking forward to reading. Bliss.

That shock of recognition when you read the opening lines of a new-to-you author and realize you’ve found a friend.

Even if you’re the only one of your friends who is reading that novel you’re enjoying, I hope you read it anyway. If no one else likes what you like, I hope you like it anyway.

Your bookcase (or bedside table) is more than a collection of books. It’s a collection of the pieces of you.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

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