Laurie Lewis Author Interview

The Dragons of Alsace Farm is a beautiful story about love and family. What was the inspiration that spawned this novel?

Thank you. I appreciate that so much. After my father’s passing, our previously happy, healthy mother began exhibiting signs of what we assumed was depression, along with anxiety attacks and confusion. After years spent trying to get a diagnosis, it was finally determined that Mom was in the early stages of dementia. Soon after Mom’s diagnosis, we found a young couple with mild disabilities who wanted more independence. They moved into Mom’s home for a time, offering farm help and companionship in exchange for rent. Mom believed she was helping them, and they felt they were helping her. I watched how the three of them rose above their limitations to lift and serve one another. Although I changed the nature of the challenges facing Noah and Tayte, and made Agnes a composite character, it was Mom and this young couple who ultimately inspired the final book.

The bond that develops between Noah and Tayte forms over their mutual love of the elderly woman Agnes. Was there anything about the characters’ relationship that you pulled from your own life?

A bond can develop when people share sorrow. The diagnosis of dementia, or any traumatic diagnosis, can have a dramatic impact on a family. Some people will pull together to protect, and stay connected to, their loved one. Others run away. It’s occurred in our family, and families I’ve interviewed have expressed similar fractures. I did use that experience of shared sorrow to help Noah and Tayte bridge the emotional gap they couldn’t overcome on their own.

Noah, I think, goes through a dramatic transformation. Did you plan the slow personality change or did it happen as you were writing?

It was planned, but earlier drafts had him even more guarded than Tayte, and as the manuscript progressed, and after chats with editors, I decided to soften him a bit, and make him more hopeful and endearing. I needed the readers to cheer for him early on. I have had several experiences with emotionally guarded youth, and interestingly enough, most of these young people were wonderful with small children and the elderly—people less likely to render judgment. I think that acceptance helps them lower their guard. That’s what Agnes does for Noah. She validates the goodness he has been trying to cultivate, and she strengthens his hope for a future that is brighter than his past.

What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be published?

Thanks for asking! I’ve got two projects in progress. “The Shell Game” has been in the works for over a year. It’s a complex political suspense novel about two last-chance people who arrive in a dying West Virginia mining town. A tip from a ruthless informant sends fallen journalism phenom, Jackson James, to Cutler’s Ridge to chase down a story lead involving three high-level passengers headed for the town in a private plane that didn’t file a flight plan.

Young scientist, Tallie Brown’s, mother forced the two of them to live a life of seclusion. When her emotionally distant mother dies in an accident, she leaves behind a newspaper article and a cryptic message that leads Tallie to Cutler’s Ridge. But the townspeople make it clear they don’t like any strangers, and worse, they seem to fear the shy, reclusive Tallie Brown.

Even the other stranger in town, reporter Jackson James, puts Tallie on his radar when Tallie predicts the fall of the private plane he came to track, right before it falls from the sky, killing everyone on board. James uncovers some strange truths about the town and Miss Brown. She has no recorded birth certificate, and the town is riddled with twenty years of secrets that involve the halls of congress and a local military base. I hope to launch “The Shell Game” before Christmas.

Also, I’ve been invited to contribute a volume for Gelato Books’ highly successful “Destination Billionaire’s Romance Series.” Romance is a new genre for me, but it’s been really fun. You’re hearing it here first—my volume will be titled “Sweet Water.” It debuts in March. I’ve been torn about whether to use my name or the pen name Addison Tayte. We’ll see. . .

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Fears and secrets are the dragons we each must face. . . In need of his own redemption, Noah Carter finally confronts his childhood hero, the once-beloved uncle who betrayed him. Instead of vengeance, he offers forgiveness, also granting Uncle John a most curious request—for Noah to work on the ramshackle farm of Agnes Deveraux Keller, a French WWII survivor with dementia. Despite all Agnes has lost, she still has much to teach Noah. But the pair’s unique friendship is threatened when Tayte, Agnes’s estranged granddaughter, arrives to claim a woman whose circumstances and abilities are far different from those of the grandmother she once knew. Items hidden in Agnes’s attic raise painful questions about Tayte’s dead parents, steeling Tayte’s determination to save Agnes, even if it requires her to betray the very woman she came to save, and the secret her proud grandmother has guarded for seventy years. The issue strains the fragile trust between Tayte and Noah, who now realizes Tayte is fighting her own secrets, her own dragons. Weighed down by past guilt and failures, he feels ill-equipped to help either woman, until he remembers Agnes’s lessons about courage and love. In order to save Agnes, the student must now become the teacher, helping Tayte heal—for Agnes’s sake, and for his.