Thursday, May 8, 2014

Blog Tour: Until That Distant Day by Jill Stengl



I'm quite excited to be a part of the launch tour for Until that Distant Day by Jill Stengl! As of Saturday I've started the book and the first few chapters hold a lot of promise. In just a few chapters I already care about Colette De Mer, wish her happiness and joy, admire her for standing up to and for her brothers, and hope she finds her own place in the world.

Back cover description
~ ~ ~

Colette and her brother Pascoe are two sides of the same coin, dependent upon one another in the tumultuous world of the new Republic. Together they labor with other leaders of the sans-culottes to ensure freedom for all the downtrodden men and women of France.

But then the popular uprisings turn bloody and the rhetoric proves false. Suddenly, Colette finds herself at odds with Pascoe and struggling to unite her fractured family against the lure of violence. Charged with protecting an innocent young woman and desperately afraid of losing one of her beloved brothers, Colette doesn’t know where to turn or whom to trust as the bloodshed creeps ever closer to home.
Until that distant day when peace returns to France, can she find the strength to defend her loved ones . . . even from one another?

"Jill Stengl is one of the rare authors with the ability to transport the reader to another world--a delightfully rich world of scent and sight and sound.” – Kim Vogel Sawyer, bestselling author of Echoes of Mercy

“Award-winning author Jill Stengl has created her greatest work yet in the inspiring and moving Until That Distant Day.” Jill Eileen Smith, bestselling author of the Wives of King David series.

~ ~ ~

As a part of this stop on the tour Jill has agreed to tell us:

“How did you go about researching the details of your story and what were some of the surprising things you learned?”

Thank you for joining my blog tour, Rina, and thanks for a great question!

I used several books about the French Revolution, including an amazing compilation of historical sources, The Days of the French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert. The bibliography of this book directed me toward original sources, many of which are available in their entirety on the Internet. I was able to read firsthand interviews and see engravings of buildings which are long gone—including the Palais des Tuileries, which is a central feature of my book.

One rabbit trail I followed while researching where the common people would have been buried at that time led me to the ossuaries in the catacombs underlying Paris. Apparently the overcrowded ancient graveyards inside the city became a public-health hazard by the late eighteenth century. So entire cemeteries were exhumed and the bones dumped into ancient mine tunnels beneath the city. At the time of my story, only one churchyard within city limits was still allowing burials—and, not many years later, even this graveyard was emptied and its contents added to the ossuaries . . . which, by the way, can be toured as part of the Paris museum system. Bizarre, n’est-ce pas?

Now who is this author you might ask? Frequent readers of this blog will recognize the name Stengl. That's right! Jill is Anne Elisabeth's mom! But now for the more formal author bio:

Jill Stengl is the author of numerous romance novels including Inspirational Reader's Choice Award- and Carol Award-winning Faithful Traitor, and the bestselling novella, Fresh Highland Heir. She lives with her husband in the beautiful Northwoods of Wisconsin, where she enjoys her three cats, teaching a high school English Lit. class, playing keyboard for her church family, and sipping coffee on the deck as she brainstorms for her next novel.

She blogs at Books, Cats, and Whimsy. Do stop by and follow her to keep up with all her writing and reading-related activities!

Any good blog tour has a giveaway...


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now be sure to visit the other stops along this tour and learn even more about this lovely book:

May 5

May 6

May 7

May 8

May 9

May 10

May 11

May 12

May 13 – Giveaway Winner Announced

4 comments:

  1. This book sounds like it will be very different from what i expected by looking at the cover. That's great, I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you again for your lovely post, Rina! I really appreciate your participation in my blog tour.
    And Carl, I hope you enjoy my story. :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're welcome Jill! Thanks so much for letting me be a part.

      Delete

Real Time Web Analytics