This week I’m hosting Christa Allan with Love Finds You in New Orleans, Louisiana, Yvonne Lehman with Hearts that Survive, Mary Ellis with An Amish Family Reunion, and Kelly Irvin with To Love and Cherish. If you want to enter the drawings for the books, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (February 26th) evening.
Interview with the heroine of Hearts that Survive – A Novel of the Titanic (Abingdon, March 1, 2012) by Yvonne Lehman:
1. My name is Lydia Beaumont. Others behave and speak as if the most interesting thing about me is that I’m heiress to the Beaumont Railroad Company and my father is fabulously rich. However, I think the most interesting is that I’m sailing on the Titanic, the greatest ship ever built and am on my way to America where I expect my life to really begin. And yet, if anyone else knew the secret known only to me, I suspect that would be of incredible interest.
2. What do you do for fun?
Before John, I was escorted by Craven to the finest establishments in cities like London and Paris. After John, fun was escaping from those who watched my every move, and sneaking out to run around town with friends as if I were a commoner. Now that I’ve matured considerably in the past few weeks, nothing is more fun than exploring this ship with John or just talking and laughing with him.
3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?
I dread revealing my secret because if it were something that would not cause distress, decisions, and uncertainty to many, then it would not be a secret.
4. What are you afraid of most in life?
Never being free to live and love the way I want, but having my life dictated by others.
5. What do you want out of life?
What I want most is to marry John and live happily ever after.
6. What is the most important thing to you?
Marrying John.
7. Do you read? If so, what is your favorite type of book to read?
Oh yes, my favorite book is a best-selling one titled Once Upon an English Garden. The author is aboard this ship, in second-class unfortunately but that doesn’t bother John. The two of them have become friends.
8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
If I could change one thing about me it would be my former naïveté about my own susceptibility to temptation which led to indiscretion.
9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?
Why have a pet when you, yourself, are a pet to your own father, eligible and ineligible bachelors, friends of the family, servants, governesses, tutors, and guards. In a sense, I feel like a pet who is pampered and trained and has every moment scheduled. If I want something fetched I simply speak to a servant and I never fear any disobedience. Were I to have a pet however, I think it would be a little songbird in a cage, so I could set him free.
10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
Oh, when one is in a palace on the sea, aboard the grandest ship ever built, one simply could not desire to travel elsewhere. We sail on a glassy smooth sea, with only hope and beauty ahead of us and my dear love is walking toward me. The grandeur of this ship is a world of its own. I cannot imagine traveling back from this or being more fortunate than to be aboard this magnificent “unsinkable” ship of dreams.