This week I’m hosting Louise M. Gouge with A Proper Companion, Carol Cox with Love in Disguise, Patty Smith Hall with Hearts in Hiding and Elizabeth Musser with Two Crosses and Two Testaments. 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 (June 17th) evening.
Interview with the heroine: Gabriella Madison from Two Crosses
1. Gabriella Madison, tell me the most interesting thing about you.
About me? Goodness! Bon, je vais essayer! Oh, excuse me. I tend to change languages—bad habit. Okay, here goes. I’m an American who grew up as an MK (missionary kid) in Senegal and right now, March 1962, I’m spending a year studying in France. I speak English, French and several tribal languages. I wear a Huguenot cross that my mother gave me, and ever since I arrived here in Southern France, that cross has been a catalyst, plunging me into all kind of adventures that have to do with Algeria’s War for Independence from France. So far, 1961-62 has been a crazy year for me—being far away from home, falling in love with a handsome young professor who doesn’t share my beliefs, being set up as a scapegoat in the midst of a very complicated war.
2. What do you do for fun?
I read poetry—honest, I do. And I go for long walks in the countryside of Southern France, watching the leaves change colors on the vineyards in the fall and spying that first red poppy in spring.
3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?
I needed to confront that handsome young professor, David, about quite a few things, and I just wasn’t sure at all that I could do it. Confrontation doesn’t come easy for me.
4. What are you afraid of most in life?
Oh, that’s easy! I’m afraid that I won’t truly hear God’s voice and perhaps I’ll miss out on the plans He has for me.
5. What do you want out of life?
I really want to do something big and important for God. Trouble is, I keep seeing how He asks me to be faithful in the small things first.
6. What is the most important thing to you?
To understand forgiveness and grace. I talked about it for a long time before I really understood it, and then the Lord allowed a lot of events in my life to draw me into a much deeper understanding of these beautiful concepts made up in the heart of God.
7. Do you read? If so, what is your favorite type of book to read?
I actually read a lot. The Bible, of course, and lots of French and English literature. (Those are my majors in college.) I really appreciate John Donne, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, T. S. Elliot and even D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce. Oh, and there is the most wonderful little novel that just came out last year by Harper Lee. It’s called To Kill a Mockingbird. If you haven’t read it, you should!
8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
My big mouth. I am often talking too much, revealing too much information and it keeps getting me in trouble!
9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?
Well, at this very moment—we’re in France in 1962, right?—I do not have a pet, but if you want to know about my life later, you’ll have to read Two Testaments and Two Destinies and then you’ll see a different answer to this question!
10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
Sometimes I think I’d go back to the rape, and I’d scream. Maybe then it wouldn’t have happened to Mama. But then I keep hearing what Mother Griolet (the old nun who becomes my mentor in Two Crosses) says about God changing tragedy to triumph and how our lives are a tapestry, and I know I couldn’t have changed that, wouldn’t have been able to since I was just a little girl. And the outcome, oh, of course I wouldn’t have changed the outcome. But if I could have had the penicillin for Ericka all those years later, yes, that I would have changed. I’m sure of it. I would go back to 1954 and that hut in Senegal and we would have had penicillin for Ericka. Somehow.
Merci for this interview, Margaret!
