Guest post By Christine Lindsay
I love to be swept away in a novel. I want romance, settings where I can feel the wind on my face, taste the air, breathe in the scent of flora and fauna, feel the touch of human skin, the softness of animal fur, and on and on. I want danger, adventure, a touch of mystery. But I also love history.
One of the fascinating historical tidbits in Sofi’s Bridge was not a new one to me, growing up. My great-grandfather and his 14-year-old son (my grandfather) were both riveters on the building of the Titanic. In fact, the Titanic was my grandfather’s very first ship in the Belfast shipyard where many of Great Britain’s ships were built. Naturally this unique trade that my paternal ancestry was so involved in was a subject I absolutely had to include in a novel one day.
But, still I had to do a fair amount of research on how the riveters worked. Below is a short excerpt from Sofi’s Bridge describing that trade, not in Ireland, but where the brother of my Irish hero in Sofi’s Bridge brought the riveter’s skill to building a bridge in Washington State.
Neil picked out his brother from among the men, and expelled a long sigh. On the bridge deck, or on one of those meager platforms hanging over the side, one slip, one fumble...from that height...and a man could die.On the deck, Jimmy rapped his elongated tongs against the cone-shaped catcher can, waiting for the man known as the heater. The heater sent Jimmy a nod and thrust the peg of steel into the portable cast iron forge. When the peg of metal glowed to a molten white, he pitched it forward. Jimmy caught it in the catcher can and inserted the glowing rivet into a hole in the girder. With the same concentration Neil would use with a scalpel, Jimmy waited for the bucker to place his buckling tool against the head of the rivet, and for the riveter to hammer it home.
Sofi’s Bridge has loads of other historical tidbits to recreate for my reader, what life was like in Washington State in 1913.
About Christine: Irish born Christine Lindsay is the author of multi-award-winning Christian fiction and non-fiction. Readers describe her writing as gritty yet tender, realistic yet larger than life, with historical detail that collides into the heart of psychological and relationship drama.
Christine's fictional novels have garnered the ACFW Genesis Award, The Grace Award, Canada’s The Word Guild Award, and was a finalist twice for Readers’ Favorite as well as 2nd place in RWA’s Faith Hope and Love contest.
This author’s non-fiction memoir Finding Sarah Finding Me is the true-life story that started this award-winning career in Christian fiction and non-fiction. This book is a must for anyone whose life has been touched by adoption. Christine is currently writing a new fictional series set on the majestic coast of Ireland and loaded with her use of setting as a character that will sweep the reader away. Subscribe to her newsletter on her website www.christinelindsay.org
About the Book: Seattle Debutante Sofi Andersson will do everything in her power to protect her sister who is suffering from shock over their father's death. Charles, the family busy-body, threatens to lock Trina in a sanatorium—a whitewashed term for an insane asylum—so Sofi will rescue her little sister, even if it means running away to the Cascade Mountains with only the new gardener Neil Macpherson to protect them. But in a cabin high in the Cascades, Sofi begins to recognize that the
handsome immigrant from Ireland harbors secrets of his own. Can she trust this man whose gentle manner brings such peace to her traumatized sister and such tumult to her own emotions? And can Neil, the gardener continue to hide from Sofi that he is really Dr. Neil Galloway, a man wanted for murder by the British police? Only an act of faith and love will bridge the distance that separates lies from truth and safety.
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