Review of A HOSTAGE TO HERITAGE and an interview with the author

An Interview with Suzanne Adair

1.  Your novels are notable for the accuracy of the period of history they are based upon. How important is that? and how do you do it?

Period accuracy is extremely important, Warren. One goal of historical fiction authors is to transport readers into the past and allow them to vicariously partake of experiences that happened long ago. Inaccuracies destroy the story’s spell. That’s probably why readers who are history buffs or are in history-related careers feel that reading inaccurate historical fiction wastes their time.

I read a lot of primary and secondary research material about the American Revolution and the periods around it. My research is never-ending. But I realized early on that just reading about the war wouldn’t suffice at helping me figure out what people who’d lived more than 225 years ago had experienced and how they reacted to it. I’m a woman of the 21st century. I have access to electricity, safe drinking water, instant communication, powerful medications, and a bunch of other things that people living during the war didn’t have. Danger and scarcity shaped their decisions. How could I capture 18th-century sensory impressions and mindsets?

The wrong way to create characters for these stories would be to dress 21st-century Americans in 18th-century clothing and drop them into a novel. Georgian-era people lived in a different culture, and that gave rise to different priorities, logical processes, values, and so forth. What provided me with tremendous insight into an 18th-century America that didn’t have electricity or antibiotics was becoming a Revolutionary War reenactor.

Revolutionary War reenacting puts me right in the midst of the sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and textures that someone back then would have experienced. Those sensory impressions and reactions inform my writing.

2.  Your relevant history blog describes historical events in readable and interesting ways. Your blog has readers from all over the globe. Where do you find writers who provide such interesting content?

In 2010, I queried my readers about what they’d like to see on my blog and learned that their enjoyment of history wasn’t confined to just the period of the American Revolution. Essentially, if I could feature the fun, fascinating bits of history—what was deleted from high school class—my readers would love it.

However I couldn’t possibly write fast enough to keep up with their hunger for history. Fortunately there’s a lot of historical fiction and non-fiction out there. Most of the authors writing it don’t get enough exposure. (I meet these authors through my historical research, author activities, and online discussion groups.) So I decided that I’d create a feature for my blog and spotlight those authors in that feature.

Humans don’t learn from their history mistakes. Have you noticed that one of the first items to be given the boot when budgets are cut is history—as if history is unimportant? So I also decided to show why the past is relevant. Thus was born “Relevant History” in early 2011.

3.  How can readers find out more about you and your writing?

Titles for my “Mysteries of the American Revolution” series are Paper Woman, The Blacksmith’s Daughter, and Camp Follower. Titles for my “Michael Stoddard American Revolution Thrillers” series so far are Regulated for Murder and A Hostage to Heritage. And here are my social media links:

Blog: http://www.SuzanneAdair.typepad.com

Quarterly electronic newsletter: http://tinyletter.com/Suzanne-Adair-News

Web site: http://www.SuzanneAdair.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Suzanne.Adair.Author

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Suzanne_Adair

Thanks for the review and interview, Warren!

Bio:

Award-winning novelist Suzanne Adair is a Florida native who lives in a two hundred-year-old city at the edge of the North Carolina Piedmont, named for an English explorer who was beheaded. Her suspense and thrillers transport readers to the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War, where she brings historic towns, battles, and people to life. She fuels her creativity with Revolutionary War reenacting and visits to historic sites. When she’s not writing, she enjoys cooking, dancing, hiking, and spending time with her family. A Hostage to Heritage, her second Michael Stoddard American Revolution thriller, was released April 2013.

Book description:

A boy kidnapped for ransom. And a madman who didn't bargain on Michael Stoddard's tenacity.

Spring 1781. The American Revolution enters its seventh grueling year. In Wilmington, North Carolina, redcoat investigator Lieutenant Michael Stoddard expects to round up two miscreants before Lord Cornwallis's army arrives for supplies. But his quarries' trail crosses with that of a criminal who has abducted a high-profile English heir. Michael's efforts to track down the boy plunge him into a twilight of terror from radical insurrectionists, whiskey smugglers, and snarled secrets out of his own past in Yorkshire.

A Hostage To Heritage a Michael Stoddard American Revolution Thriller

by Suzanne Adair

            Lt. Michael Stoddard of his majesty’s eighty-second regiment first appears in the book riding his horse, Cleopatra, in pursuit of two rebels.  He fails to catch them resulting in one of the many frustrating tasks Stoddard is ordered to complete.  A ten-year-old boy from a noble family is abducted. Stoddard knows that if he cannot recover the child, safe and sound, he has no friends among the gentry and no financial resources to cushion the blow that failure will inevitably cause.  He could be discharged from the army and it is impossible to live on the tiny pension he would receive. His investigations are complicated by the fact that in North Carolina the war for American independence is not going well for the British.  Individual alliances are unclear. The war is used as an excuse by both loyalists and rebels to settle old scores.

            Stoddard has to suss out who is lying and who is telling at least part of the truth.  Enemies from his past appear and disappear unexpectedly.  Motives become entangled with emotions, personal, family and even national histories.  Even those closest to Stoddard have secrets that have to be unraveled before he can save the child and thereby save himself. 

            This is another excellent book set against the background of the southern

conflicts of the American Revolution by Suzanne Adair.  I really enjoyed it.