I’ve loved Beth White’s books for decades! Sadly, I haven’t started reading her Daughtry House series yet, something to be rectified post haste. As you will see from one of the questions below, this Australian is not quite up on her American history, but I now know this series is set in the Reconstruction Era, following on from the Civil War, a time of great change and adjustment. While dealing with heavy topics, you can always be assured Beth’s books will be sprinkled with humour that will surprise and delight you.

Thanks to Revell, we are giving away a copy of A Reluctant Belle so be sure to enter the giveaway below, via the Rafflecopter form. For now, it’s over to Beth:

Impoverished Southern belle Joelle Daughtry has a secret. By day she has been helping her sisters in their quest to turn the run-down family plantation into a resort hotel after the close of the Civil War. But by night and under a male pseudonym, she has been penning articles for the local paper in support of the construction of a Negro school. With the Mississippi arm of the Ku Klux Klan gaining power and prestige, Joelle knows she is playing a dangerous game.

When childhood enemy and current investor in the Daughtry house renovation Schuyler Beaumont takes over his assassinated father’s candidacy for state office, Joelle finds that in order to protect her family and her home, she and Schuyler will have to put aside their longstanding personal conflict and develop a united public front. The trouble is, what do you do when animosity becomes respect–and even love–if you’re already engaged to someone else?

Please share a little about your characters, Joelle and Schuyler

• Joelle is an introverted bookworm who would be completely happy sitting alone in her room, working on a novel. Somehow, she becomes accidentally-on-purpose engaged to the local pastor, who has been pursuing her for quite some time. But when her identity as the author of politically-tinged and controversial articles for the local newspaper becomes public, her family’s hotel business—and the Negro school she has founded— become the target of the Ku Klux Klan. Joelle has to give up some privacy, overcome self-doubt, and take charge of her life, in order to confront evil forces threatening the people she loves.
• Meanwhile, Joelle’s childhood nemesis, Schuyler Beaumont, has come back into her life as a partner in the hotel, bringing his own brand of mayhem. Schuyler’s father has been killed in a race riot while running for political office, and finding the killer will mean acting like a hero, whether he feels like one or not. In the process of this tandem spiritual and emotional transformation, Schuyler and Joelle join forces and realize perhaps they were meant for each other after all.

Describe your book in 5 adjectives

• Funny
• Tense
• Transformative
• Emotional
• Deep

How challenging is it to research stories about the Underground Railway and slavery?

• Well, there may be some misunderstanding in the question. The Underground Railway has to do with slaves escaping during the Civil War (1861-1865). The Daughtry House series is set in the Reconstruction Era, 1870-1874. So during this time of American history, the slaves have been emancipated by law. The tension comes from these former slaves finding a way to merge into the destroyed plantation culture—finding ways to earn a living, ways to gain an education, ways to develop strong families—while white Southerners had to adjust their economic expectations and come to terms with former slaves living among them. As might be expected, the transition was difficult. There were white Southerners like my lead characters, who wanted to do the right thing, usually from good hearts and pure motives. But there were many who resisted with cruel measures.
• So how difficult was the research? This period is not taught with any depth in most American history courses in high school, so there’s a good bit of ignorance about major players such as President Ulysses S. Grant, Attorney General Amos Akerman and black congressmen and senators. I read lots of primary sources by and about these men, and found them fascinating, disturbing, and inspiring by turns.

What is something you discovered as you researched this story that surprised you?

• I was surprised to find that many black elected officials during the time of Reconstruction exhibited an enormous amount of patience with white Southerners, though they must have been angry and frustrated with the blindness and selfishness they encountered. True, many freedmen demonstrated their eagerness for the violent resistance to end—they armed themselves, drilled and marched on courthouse lawns, and fought back when attacked. And we don’t hear much about that today.

What appeals to you most about the Civil War era?

• You know, I don’t love it. It was a dark, sad time in our nation’s history, especially in the South, where I have lived all my life. Half the country was trying to hold on to a selfish, evil institution and willing to kill the other half over it. The reason I even jumped into writing about it is because I think it’s important to remember why Americans fought to hold our nation together, and why we work through our differences—particularly as Christians. Thankfully, there is always hope, even in the darkest and saddest of crises. And there are always heroes who will do the right thing, even at the cost of their own lives.

What are the major themes in this story?

• I think I’m writing about reconciliation, forgiveness, family. Mostly about the fact that submitting our own will to God is the only source of real joy and purpose in life.

Beth at her local coffee shop, Carpe Diem

Which character did you enjoy writing most?

• In this book, I loved exploring Joelle’s inner doubt of her own worth and coming through it with the conviction that God had made her perfectly in His image for His glory. She’s such a mix of brains and practicality and innocence, overlaid by a refreshing disdain for her own outer beauty. She just made me laugh with her big words and misunderstanding of other people’s motives.

Which character gave you the most grief?

• Do you mean as in “hard to write”? Well, some of these characters are still sort of mysterious to me—Lemuel Frye, the white schoolteacher who married a freed slave and had the gumption to testify against Ku Klux Klan murderers, for instance. But I found Pastor Gil Reese, who more or less manipulated Joelle into accepting his proposal—then wanted to shape her into his image of a perfect woman—highly distasteful. He was well motivated, I think, from his own perspective. And certainly guys like him run rampant. But golly, what a jackweed.

What emotions did you experience while writing this story?

• I felt everything from the distaste I just mentioned about Gil Reese, to horror and sadness when Schuyler is being initiated into the Klan, to huge fits of giggles when writing Schuyler and Joelle’s kooky love scenes. I told somebody else the other day, after I wrote the pool scene, I had to go lie down. And fan myself. Every time they were on the page together, something electric happened. I’m very happy with their love story.

What parts of the writing process become easier with each new story? What becomes more challenging?

• Rel, there is nothing easy about this process. It gets harder every time, maybe because my own expectations go up with every book. I look up every little thing, because I can’t stand research mistakes. I over think motivations. I try to make plots a little twistier and more dangerous with every story.

You’ve written stories across a number of genres. Does one come more easily than others?

• They’re all hard in different ways (can you tell I’m in a cranky mood today?). Comedy comes pretty naturally to me—which is why I generally blend it into whatever genre I’m writing—but I like character-driven comedy, which means the rest of the plot has to be carefully planned and executed, otherwise the funny parts seem empty. Honestly, some of the comic stuff happens on the fly, and that’s always fun—and it can be extended and woven in for extra laughs as the story proceeds (for example the gags with Joelle’s giant vocabulary).

What is in your writing pipeline now?

• I’m about halfway through the third book in the Daughtry House series, A Reckless Love. Baby Daughtry sister Aurora “adopts” a couple of saloon girls, tries to fix the inner hurts of a damaged U. S. deputy marshal, and helps hide witnesses in a KKK trial. She’s a busy girl. After that, I’m planning to launch research into a brand-new series set in WWII era Mobile, Alabama. That should be fun!

Thanks Beth! Love having you visit 🙂

Beth White‘s day job is teaching music at an inner-city high school in historic Mobile, Alabama. A native Mississippian, she writes historical romance with a Southern drawl and is the author of The Pelican Bride, The Creole Princess, and The Magnolia Duchess. Her novels have won the American Christian Fiction Writers Carol Award, the RT Book Club Reviewers’ Choice Award, and the Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award. Learn more at www.bethwhite.net.

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Buy at Amazon: A Reluctant Belle or Koorong

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