I was told the old adage about polite discussion when I was a child—I don’t recall exactly when I was bestowed this advice but I can guess it was after a big family “discussion” loud enough for the neighbors to weigh in if they wanted to. I’m one of six kids—#5 of 6, with a dad whose sailor’s voice was loud enough to send all of us hopping. I was too young to be part of the political discussions around the dinner table, so I just listened. Actually because of the volume I couldn’t help but listen, right along with the neighbors when the windows were open.
The adage was demonstrated to me at work one day when I was still very young. I was perhaps 19 years old and over lunch I casually asked a co-worker who she was going to vote for in an upcoming presidential election, fully prepared to share my own choice. We happened to be sitting with my co-worker’s friend, who turned on me with what I can dramatically but accurately describe as an icy stare. “I can’t believe you just asked that question. It’s none of your business.” So after lunch I slunk away, regretting I’d forgotten the old adage, at least when outside of family.
Well, my newest book might force me to break the old adage again. This week I received my first, advance copy of Springtime of the Spirit. Yippee! This is my eleventh time if you count my three seculars long and happily out of print, but the feeling of satisfaction never gets old. Each book comes with its own frosting heaped on top of that satisfaction. With The Oak Leaves, I was proud to have found something positive to write about the Fragile X diagnosis we received as a family; with My Sister Dilly, I was thankful to have explored a topic many people would have avoided, one that perhaps is best told by someone like me, the mom to a handicapped child. And with each of my First World War books, I was happy to have learned as much as I did about a war I still don’t understand.
Springtime of the Spirit is my last World War One novel, appropriately set at the end of the war, in Germany. It’s a setting that at first appealed to me because of the drama, and because it is so little explored in other novels. When I started my research I began to guess why. It’s a time full of so many fights and factions—and impossible to understand politics—that it was difficult to sort my way through.
But what I came away with was one big political discussion. About conservative vs. liberal, about the size and involvement of governing powers, about individuality and the collective good. About the reality of fairness. As I was researching, I started listening to the news more often. Amazingly enough many of these topics are being talked about in our volatile world today—proving to me how little man changes. We still have the same underlying hope for freedom in a safe society.
As usual when confronting a topic I found daunting, I wrapped it up in a romance. It’s amazing how a romantic relationship between two people with opposing insights can make almost any topic fun to read.
So this is my newest offering, and if I’m required to break the rule about not talking politics, so be it. I’ve been known to break the other rule, too, about not talking religion…
Join Me!