I’m delighted to feature the brilliant Rachel McMillan on the blog today as she shares about her latest characters, Diana and Brent Somerville from the newly released novel, The London Restoration.

Rachel and I share a long affinity with Christian Fiction, both having read it since our childhoods. I win the longevity contest, simply due to my age! It’s been a joy to know Rachel before she became a published writer, watch her own backlist grow as she champions writers, readers, and Christian Fiction with enthusiasm and intelligence, and become an literary agent.

If you follow Rachel, you will have heard much about the Somervilles! Enjoy this closer look at this couple and don’t miss your chance to win a copy of The London Restoration, thanks to Rachel’s publisher, Thomas Nelson.

The secrets that might save a nation could shatter a marriage.

Madly in love, Diana Foyle and Brent Somerville married in London as the bombs of World War II dropped on their beloved city. Without time for a honeymoon, the couple spent the next four years apart. Diana, an architectural historian, took a top-secret intelligence post at Bletchley Park. Brent, a professor of theology at King’s College, believed his wife was working for the Foreign Office as a translator when he was injured in an attack on the European front.

Now that the war is over, the Somervilles’ long-anticipated reunion is strained by everything they cannot speak of. Diana’s extensive knowledge of London’s churches could help bring down a Russian agent named Eternity. She’s eager to help MI6 thwart Communist efforts to start a new war, but because of the Official Secrets Act, Diana can’t tell Brent the truth about her work.

Determined to save their marriage and rebuild the city they call home, Diana and Brent’s love is put to the ultimate test as they navigate the rubble of war and the ruins of broken trust.

Diana Foyle (later Somerville)

Physical Stats

Height: 5”6

Hair colour & style: blonde, curled

Eye colour: blue

Dress sense: as fashionable as possible given the war rations

Resembles…

Romola Garai

Can’t live without…

Wren churches, tea, Brent, hot chocolate and chess nights with Simon Barre (when she’s at Bletchley Park) Late night chats with her best friend at Bletchley Sophie Villiers.

Strengths

Diana is unfailingly loyal. She will follow Brent to the ends of the earth and take a bullet for him. In so many books we see the man being protective of the woman, my heroine is very protective of Brent and I love that. She also puts up with a lot when it comes to him: he is determined to keep his wartime experiences secret and even refuses to share a bed with her for a long time after his return. Diana knows that keeping at his side will be worth it.  Also, Diana is smart and sees the world not as it is in its rubble but in its potential. This really helps her in being able to see the churches as they will be rebuilt again and not as they are

Vulnerabilities

Diana is a horrible housekeeper ( understandable considering her academic background and then being at Bletchley Park).  She can be quite naive but she makes up for it in her book smarts.

Passions

Architecture, history.
 
What book would she recommend?

Ditchfield’s Guide to the Cathedrals and Churches of England and Wales
 
Your inspiration for the character

I really wanted to write a gorgeous nerd. So often in these stories, a super strong woman is not fashionable or attractive: we down play those qualities because we want women to be one thing or another. Diana is beautiful but she is also exceedingly intelligent. It is the fact that Brent hones in on her intellect that helps forge their relationship. I also really needed a woman obsessed with Wren churches to counterbalance Brent’s study of the early church in the gospels: I wanted the religious connotation of the churches as well as the concrete human representation of God’s church on earth through the London architecture and Diana was a perfect person to represent that.
 
Background to the story

I had literally no plans on ever writing WWII inspired fiction until I was on vacation in London three years ago. I had gone to some churches I hadn’t been to on previous trips ( as a history enthusiast and church architecture nerd) and at All Hallows by the Tower I learned that while the Blitz did irreparable damage to so many churches, it also unearthed priceless Roman Artifacts. I thought that was dazzling. But it wasn’t until I went to St Bartholomew the Great, a 900+ year old church that had withstood Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, war and disease, the zeppelins of the Great War and the Blitz bombs of the Second World War that this wall hit me. It was a really clear moment. I was so overcome by that church that I just dropped into a chair bowled over by the history and I transparently remember a voice saying “What are you going to do with this passion I have given you?” and from that moment I knew I had to write churches. So I went to a café across from St. Paul’s Cathedral and opened a new notebook and my vacation was no longer a vacation. I returned a year later and for 10 days just studied the churches in London as well as spent time at Bletchley Park where some of Diana’s war time experiences take place. I also learned that divorce rates were highest after the war, and I really wanted to play into a love story that began where most movie credits would start to roll: with the reunion. I was greatly influenced by The Scarlet Pimpernel and by Kate Breslin’s High as the Heavens: both which feature married couples in and around times of war.

Brent Somerville

Physical Stats

Height: 5”9

Hair colour & style: dark red grown out army regulation as he’s just gotten back from the front

Eye colour: green

Dress sense: Brent’s an academic so I picture him in a lot of vests and collared shirts as would befit a man of the late 40s on his salary

Resembles…

Brent is REALLY hard to cast because I see him so clearly in my mind but I have had a reader think of Eddie Redmayne and another James Norton (maybe he’s a cross between both).

Can’t live without…

Brent loves tea and sketching and Paul’s letters to the Corinthians.He also loves London and knows it extremely well. I love that he and Diana are soulmates and bring out the best in each other so he definitely cannot live without her.

Strengths

Brent is exceptionally physically strong after rowing for years at Cambridge and hoisting stretchers on the battlefield for his years of service. Like my Opa, also a stretcher bearer for the Canadian forces, Brent spends the entirety of the war never once shooting a gun. Brent is determined to make his relationship with Diana work beyond all that she is keeping from him.  He also has a delicious speaking voice. This is one trait I love in men and something a lot of authors never focus on. Diana partly falls in love with his voice.

Vulnerabilities

Brent can be sarcastic and cutting. Sometimes it just makes for endearing banter, but other times it can hurt. He is extremely closed off and feels that he deserves to keep things from Diana. He is quick to believe that she has abandoned him and really has to work at trusting her –but not without a few stupid spats of temper.

Passions

Brent loves to get into really heated debates about Paul, he loves to read Greek. He’s a talented visual artist and sketches a lot.
 
What book would they recommend?

When he first meets Diana he is reading Etienne Gilson’s treatise on Thomas Aquinas. Sounds boring but I am certain Brent can make it interesting.
 
Your inspiration for the character

Diana needs to represent the physical manifestation of God’s house on earth through her passion for church architectural history, Brent, then, is the spiritual counterpart. He sees the churches as a ramification of the early gospels —and as a professor of New Testament theology has a spiritual perspective that Diana doesn’t have.

After writing two very sweet heroes Hamish DeLuca (Murder at the Flamingo) and Oliver Thorne (Rose in Three Quarter Time), I really wanted to write a hero with a sarcastic edge. I’m an extremely sarcastic person, LOL, and it was fun to have Brent use his wit that way. I also really believe that Brainy is the new Sexy: I love smart guys.  He challenged me a lot that way.

Thank you, Rachel!

Rachel McMillan is the author of The Herringford and Watts mysteries, The Van Buren and DeLuca mysteries and The Three Quarter Time series of contemporary Viennese romances as well as The London Restoration and The Mozart Code. She is also the author of the non-fiction books Dream, Plan and Go and A Very Merry Holiday Movie Guide Rachel lives in Toronto, Canada and is always planning her next adventure.

Reviewz Extras
All Things McMillan @ Relz Reviewz
Website || Facebook || Twitter || Instagram
Buy from Amazon: The London Restoration or Koorong

a Rafflecopter giveaway