The Curator’s Daughter with Melanie Dobson q&a

Hello, reader friends! We are celebrating the release of The Curator’s Daughter by Melanie Dobson with a visit and a giveaway! 

 

q&a

Share five favorites.

M: indoor activity – Reading, journaling, and sipping hot tea by the fireplace, preferably on an overcast Oregon day.

outdoor activity – Hiking and hot tubbing (in that exact order!)

place to write – Our local coffee shop for regular writing days and on those deadline days…preferably a getaway overlooking the ocean to calm my racing mind. The midnight hours are the best for me when it comes to stepping into a fictional world.

secondary characters – Definitely Libby, my tenacious autistic artist in Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor. She was “broken” by culture’s standards in the 1950s and certainly misunderstood, but God gifted her with an eye for beauty and the ability to transfer the gardens of Ladenbrooke Manor onto paper. It was pure joy for me to write her redemptive story from the perspective of a cast of characters who didn’t necessarily like each other but they all loved her.

book you’ve read recently – Whose Waves These Are by Amanda Dykes was my favorite time-slip novel last year. Compelling, lyrical, all-around gorgeous writing.

B: Oooo! Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor is one I’ve not gotten to yet, I’ll have to fix that!

What are some of the challenges you faced while writing The Curator’s Daughter? 

M: The main question that I wrestled through as I developed this story was: How did intelligent, God-fearing Germans get swept into the rhetoric and vile belief system of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party? This drove me to dig deeply into my research and my own heart. Then the answers poured out, like they often do for me, through the multiple perspectives of a time-slip novel.

B: Yes, I look forward to the answers you’ve found to that question.

What did you learn or discover about yourself while writing The Curator’s Daughter?

M: As someone who’s been writing World War II-era fiction for seven years, it has become easy for me to pass judgment on those who seemed to make bad choices before and during the Holocaust. But when I walked alongside my German characters in the writing of this novel, when I realized what they faced and what they didn’t know through the much clearer lens of hindsight, I discovered that I was no different than many during this era who were sucked into Nazism. This experience has made me even more vigilant to weigh what is right and wrong today, watching the actions of others instead of just listening to their words. And then trying to weigh my own thoughts and actions as I determine whether I’m faithfully living what I believe.

B: Oh, that’s so good! 

What is your next release and/or what are you working on now?

M: I love writing about seemingly ordinary people who do extraordinary things to help others in a crisis. My next time-slip novel, set partially in Southern France, was inspired by Quaker men and women who risked their lives to rescue Jewish children during World War II, helping some of these children escape over the treacherous Pyrenees Mountains to find freedom on the other side.

B: I’m looking forward to it! Thank you so much for taking the time to visit with us, Melanie! 

 

 

giveaway

Thanks to the generosity of the publisher, one fortunate Faithfully Bookish reader friend will win a print copy of The Curator’s Daughter by Melanie Dobson.

US only | ends 04/15/21 | giveaway policy

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 Melanie Dobson writes some of the best split-time novels I’ve ever read!
Be sure to add The Curator’s Daughter by Melanie Dobson to your tbr!