My guest today is Author Erin Rainwater, who tells us a story that is very close to something that just happened in my family too. Here’s Erin:

“I always thought of my mom as a strong woman. Widowed at 42, she was left with five children ages two to ten. I was the two year old. Mom took a streetcar to work every day in a time when single-parenting was uncommon. She saw to it that all five of us kids got college degrees. But it wasn’t until nine months before she died—at the age of 93—that I realized just how strong a woman she had been long before the tragedy of losing her husband. In fact, I’m now sure it was that strength that carried her through.

I was visiting back home in PA, doing my usual snooping sweep of her basement (she lived in the same house since her marriage to my dad in 1939—the house where I grew up). In a very dark and very dusty corner, I found boxes of letters my parents had written to each other during WW II. It was the most precious treasure anyone could ever find! I read, in my father’s own handwriting, how my mom had given her consent for him to join the Army Air Corps. He was a successful attorney, and was not drafted, but felt a calling to go. He referred to it as a “tic,” something inside telling him HE was the one meant to do this job.

Problem was, mom was pregnant with their first child, and he’d be leaving them behind. He wrote of how torn he’d been in “that heart-rending period preceding the acceptance of my commission, the mental confusion that harassed me when the time arrived to decide between home and country.” In another letter, Daddy wrote: “Sure, I could say ‘let the other fellow do the fighting. I’ll slip out of it some way.’ But I am not constitutionally constructed that way. The hypocrisy of it would make me uneasy and unhappy.” He loved my mom all the more for making it easy for him to do what she knew he wanted to do. “You indeed have been my inspiration and I know shall always be. Many, many times I have wondered what my position and mental attitude would be if I didn’t have you. But I do, and for that I shall be eternally grateful to the Almighty.” Was there ever a more passionate love letter?

Having already completed my novel, True Colors, when I found these letters, I knew I had to go back and rewrite one particular scene. My protagonists, Michael and Cassie, face this exact same situation (except for the issue of expecting a child). My father’s written words became part of Michael’s dialogue. Cassie, like my mother, faces subjecting her heart to her man’s

destiny. She, too, shows incredible strength of inner character while war rages around her. That scene is my tribute to my parents’ situation back then, and their love for each other. What a blessed child I am to have been born of that love.” — Erin

Erin, my daughter found the WWII letters between her grandparents recently when we were cleaning out their home after my mother in law’s passing. And everyone, Erin tells me that her novel has been awarded the Gold Medal for Historical Fiction by the Military Writers Society of America! Bravo, Erin. To learn more, visit her website. Thanks for being my guest, Erin.–Lyn