I’m delighted to have Valerie Fraser Luesse back at Relz Reviewz celebrating the release of Almost Home, her homefront WWII novel, set in Alabama and inspired by her own family’s experiences during the war. If you love historical novels set in the South, then this book is for you! Valerie chats about her characters, her inspiration for the book, and how she immerses herself in 1940s cultural mores.

Thanks to Revell, we are giving away a copy of Almost Home, so be sure to enter via the Rafflecopter form below. For now, enjoy these fascinating insights into the story and learn more about this talented writer!

Thanks for chatting with us today, Valerie!

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With America’s entrance into the Second World War, the town of Blackberry Springs, Alabama, has exploded virtually overnight. Workers from all over are coming south for jobs in Uncle Sam’s munitions plants and they’re bringing their pasts with them, right into Dolly Chandler’s grand but fading family home turned boardinghouse.

An estranged young couple from the Midwest, unemployed professors from Chicago, a widower from Mississippi, a shattered young veteran struggling to heal from the war they’re all hoping Dolly’s house will help them find their way back to the lives they left behind. But the house has a past of its own.

When tragedy strikes, Dolly’s only hope will be the circle of friends under her roof and their ability to discover the truth about what happened to a young bride who lived there a century before.

Please share a little about your character, Dolly, and two of your favourite boarders

Dolly is like so many Southern women I know—they basically just want to feed everybody! But food is their way of showing love and support. Dolly’s very much like that. She wants everyone under her roof to feel welcome and loved. She has a heart as big as her kitchen, you might say. And even in hard times, her faith and her family give her strength to get through.

One of my favorite boarders is Reed Ingram, the young war vet who lived on the same loop as Dolly and her husband, Si, when he was a child. His family moved away, and he never felt at home anywhere else. When he is wounded—physically, psychologically, and spiritually—he decides to return to Blackberry Springs and try to heal. Even though Reed is a World War II vet, I think his personal struggle still resonates because he’s trying to decide what kind of person he is—and wants to be. I think readers will root for him and for his relationship with Daisy Dupree, a young war widow who lives near Dolly.

Speaking of which, Daisy isn’t a boarder—she’s the best friend of one, Anna Williams—but Daisy is my favorite character in the book. It’s really her story, in many ways. Almost Home is dedicated to my dear friend Missey Caine, whom we lost to leukemia when she was only 32. Daisy was my way of bringing back all the qualities I loved about Missey—her wit, her courage, her honesty, her compassion. Daisy’s life doesn’t have anything to do with Missey’s, but I did take all the qualities I loved best about my friend and pour them into this character.

What inspired this story?

The war had a profound effect on my family and community—on all families and communities back then. One of my uncles was the only one in his family to be sent into a combat zone in the Pacific, and he never talked about his war experience. His sisters remembered that they had to be careful waking him up when he came home because he was easily startled. I’ve always wondered what his experience was like and how it must have affected him. And then I was fascinated with family stories about relatives who rented out rooms in their homes during the war. The South offered such cheap and plentiful land that it became a wartime factory for the military, with munitions plants and shipyards attracting workers from all over the country. They had to live somewhere, and Southern families who were still struggling from the Depression saw an opportunity. My grandmother’s brother and his wife rented out the old family home place during the war. They also had a manmade lake and skating rink, right across from the house. That’s what inspired the setting, and then the characters just grew out of it.

Describe your book in 5 adjectives

Southern, heartbreaking, heart-warming, did-I-mention-Southern, cinematic (Readers often tell me they feel like they’re watching my books instead of reading them, which I think is interesting—I’m not sure what I’m doing to make that happen! Maybe I’ll figure it out along the way.)

The “Story Shack”

The screen-door frame came off my grandmother’s house. My husband built the orange step. When our builder friend mounted that frame to that wall, he told me,

“Now Val, don’t you try goin’ through that door ’cause it don’t go anywhere.” 🙂

What fascinates you most about the homefront in the WWII era?

The unity. Absolutely everybody was involved in some way, and there was a sense of a greater good, something that brought people together during a time of hardship and loss.

How did you immerse yourself in the societal mores of the 1940s?

Oh, my goodness! I come from a family of storytellers, so I grew up hearing all about the 40s and the Depression and my grandparents and great-grandparents. No telling how many times I’ve looked through big crates of family photos, with shots of my older uncles and cousins overseas. Daddy was also in the Army, but he served much later, in the early 60s.

One picture stands out. It’s just a black-and-white snapshot of my Uncle Ferrell in uniform, standing next to his father (my maternal grandfather) in front of a huge, old-timey Southern shrub. All my life, I thought that was a picture of homecoming, that my uncle was being welcomed home from the Pacific. But then I learned just a few years ago that the photo was actually made between my uncle’s basic training and his deployment—in other words, the worst was yet to come. Isn’t that strange—how you can look at an image and completely misinterpret what’s happening right in front of you?

Which character did you enjoy writing most?

That’s a close one—I’d have to say it’s a tie between Daisy and Reed.

Which character gave you the most grief?

Jesse Williams, Anna’s estranged husband. In early drafts, I had made him so unlikeable and unsympathetic that even I couldn’t see why Anna put up with him. I realized that I had to walk a finer line between making readers sympathize with Anna, yet root for Jesse to come around.

What emotions do you think your story will generate in readers?

I hope all of them! I want readers to feel the pain of loneliness and estrangement and detachment from the world that the characters experience, but also their hope and humor.

Photo credit: Mark Sandlin

What emotions did you experience while writing this story?

I would have to say all of the above. Reed and Daisy’s struggle with church during a painful time in their lives—specifically, how they longed for communion with God but couldn’t face the high emotion of church—that’s particularly personal to me. It’s what I experienced after Missey’s death.

What story is up next from you?

Here’s the thing: Once you have a couple of novels published, everybody you know starts sharing their stories! A good friend of mine told me an amazing one about her father, who rode his bicycle from Waycross, Georgia, to Key West and back when he was only 15. She didn’t know much detail about the trip and thought I might like to fictionalize it—what made him do it, what might happen to a boy of 15 literally riding across the ocean on a bike, and how it would change him and shape his life.

Thanks Valerie!

Valerie Fraser Luesse is an award-winning magazine writer best known for her feature stories and essays in Southern Living, where she is currently a senior travel editor. Her work has been anthologized in the audio collection Southern Voices and in A Glimpse of Heaven, an essay collection featuring works by C. S. Lewis, Randy Alcorn, John Wesley, and others. As a freelance writer and editor, she was the lead writer for Southern Living 50 Years: A Celebration of People, Places, and Culture. Specializing in stories about unique pockets of Southern culture, Luesse has published major pieces on the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi Delta, Louisiana’s Acadian Prairie, and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Her editorial section on Hurricane Katrina recovery in Mississippi and Louisiana won the 2009 Writer of the Year award from the Southeast Tourism Society.

Luesse earned her bachelor’s degree in English at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, and her master’s degree in English at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She grew up in Harpersville, Alabama, a rural community in Shelby County, and now lives in Birmingham. Photo credit: Mark Sandlin

Relz Reviewz Extras
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Visit Valerie’s website
Buy at Amazon: Almost Home or Koorong

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