Please welcome today’s guest, Louise Gouge! Although Louise is well known for her Ahab’s Legacy series, her newest book, THEN CAME FAITH, recently earned the Reviewer’s Choice Award from The Road to Romance and HANNAH ROSE, another of Louise’s novels, won the 2006 Inspirational Readers Choice Contest for a Long Historical Novel.
Leave a comment by MIDNIGHT on Saturday, Aug. 4, to enter a drawing for a FREE copy of Louise’s new book: Then Came Hope. Drawing will be held on Sunday–so HURRY!
I like to say I’ve always lived in the Land of Pretend because stories have been going through my head since I was eight or nine years old. But other than school assignments, I didn’t begin writing in earnest until 1984, when my children were in middle and high school. After completing my first novel, I went back to college to see if I’d done it right and ended up earning my bachelor’s degree in English/Creative Writing. After that, I attended writers’ conferences to see what else I could learn. As a result, my first two short romances were published in the 1990s.
But I wanted to expand my world view and write stories of deeper human conflict, so I returned to college and earned a master of liberal studies degree in 1999. My master’s thesis was Ahab’s Bride, which was published in 2004 by RiverOak/Cook Communications, followed by the sequels, Hannah Rose (2005, multi-award winner) and Son of Perdition (2006).
I really hated to leave my characters behind at the end of the series. As it turned out, I didn’t have to. Three of the minor male characters in Son of Perdition had “spoken” to me about having their own books because each of these men had their own reasons for fighting in the war, and they wanted me to tell everyone about those reasons. So I proposed my post-Civil War series, and Emerald Pointe Books bought it.
The first book, Then Came Faith (2006), which recently won the Road to Romance Reviewer’s Choice Award, tells the story of Andre Beauchamp, an officer in the defeated Confederate navy. Andre is filled with bitterness that his way of life has been destroyed by the Yankees. So when he meets a young woman who is not only a Yankee but an ardent abolitionist, he feels conflicted over the strong attraction he feels for her. Likewise, Juliana Harris abhors everything Andre holds dear about the pre-war South. I enjoyed writing this story because of the deeply engrained conflict between the hero and heroine. My goal was to show how God could work in the lives of two very different people and bring them together for His purpose.
The second book, Then Came Hope (June 2007), tells the story of Ezra Johns, a Harvard educated Negro man from Boston who volunteered to fight in the first black Union regiment, the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Negro Regiment. In Ezra’s case, he had a great deal to prove because the prevailing view of the day was that Negro men would not make good soldiers or good fighters. Ezra and his real-life counterparts put an end to such uninformed speculation. If not for their courageous service all over the South, the Union might not have been preserved. It is my goal to honor their remarkable legacy. For my heroine in Then Came Hope, I created Delia, a young slave girl who has finally found the courage to run away from her cruel mistress, who tries to hold her in bondage in spite of the Emancipation Proclamation and the war’s end. Alone and frightened in the forest, Delia meets up with a small band of former slaves and Ezra, the handsome soldier. Delia has been badly abused, and only through the kindness and support of her new friends does she come to realize her worth in the eyes of God and the man she loves.
The third story, Then Came Love, will be about another northerner who fights in the Union army. More about this book at a later date!
If you would like more information about my books, please visit my website at www.Louisemgouge.com.
