Today I’m talking with World War II romance author Sarah Sundin! I loved Sarah’s most recent book, Embers in the London Sky. This is the story of a refugee mother faced with impossible decisions in the face of London’s bombings.
I asked Sarah to share some of her thoughts and feelings about the intense setting of this book.
If you could travel back in time to experience a single day of the WWII era, what
location would you visit and why?
That depends on what I’m writing—it would be amazing to experience each day I
write about. That said, unlike Hugh Collingwood—my BBC radio correspondent hero of
Embers in the London Sky—I’m not terribly courageous, so actually experiencing the
London Blitz doesn’t appeal to me.
If I could watch from a safe bubble, it would be
amazing to observe the “Second Great Fire of London” on Dec. 29, 1940—or the
massive raid on May 10, 1941—both of which are vital events in the novel.
As the parent of a five-year-old boy, reading about the difficult decisions parents
made to keep their children safe during the war absolutely gutted me.
During your research, did you allow yourself to consider what decision you would have
made if faced with the choice to keep children in the city or send them to the
country?
Absolutely. I’m a mother of three children, now grown, and my little grandson was
born while I was writing this book, so I kept wondering what I would have done.
I probably would have sent them away with the first wave of evacuations in September
1939—but when air raids failed to materialize the next few months in the “Phoney War,”
I might have been tempted to bring them home, as so many parents did. So much
would have depended on how my children were doing. But yes, those decisions would
have been gutting.
What do you hope readers will take away from Embers in the London Sky?
That’s always a difficult question to answer, because I’ve found readers often find
personal inspiration or conviction in things I may or may not have intended to stress.
And I love it!
One thing that stood out to me while writing this story was how human
beings are determined to divide ourselves into categories—whether by race, class,
nationality—we always find something. And I hope when reading about Aleida’s
experiences as a refugee, that readers would grow in compassion to the “others” in their
midst.
Sarah Sundin is an ECPA-bestselling and Christy Award-winning author of World War II fiction, including Embers in the London Sky (February 2024), The Sound of Light (2023), Until Leaves Fall in Paris (2022), and When Twilight Breaks (2021).
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Breana Johnson 