Heroine Interview from Veiled at Midnight by Christine Lindsay with a Giveaway

This week I’m hosting Missy Tippens with The Guy Next Door (US only), Christine Lindsay with Veiled at Midnight (ebook only) and Sarah Sundin with I’ll Be Home for Christmas in Where Treetops Glistens (US/Canada only) . If you want to enter the drawings for the books, please leave a comment on your post 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 (Oct. 12th) evening.

Interview with the heroine from Veiled at Midnight by Christine Lindsay:

1. Miriam, tell me the most interesting thing about you.

My occupation usually flabbergasts others when they meet me. It seems the Lord endowed me with looks that don’t match up with that of a professor of Theology and Greek at the Kinniard College for Women. I suppose most people’s perceptions of a Theology professor to be either a male with face full of gray whiskers or a matronly lady with stout walking shoes and woolen vests, of which I am neither. I’m twenty-six and told I resemble the American film actress Carole Lombard.

2. What do you do for fun?

Growing up in Colonial India one does the typical British memsahib thing—shooting, hiking, fishing, and holding one’s own on the ballroom floor. But what I enjoy most is a good theological debate. Get down to the nitty-gritty of the Greek and Hebrew text in the Good Word.

3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?

I dread confronting my half-brother about his alcoholism. I cannot fathom how Cam could be drinking to excess. We were both brought up by the finest Christian parents, but it seems Cam may be emulating his biological father, Nick Fraser, and not my dad, Major Geoff Richards, the dad who raised Cam and loved him as his own.

4. What are you afraid of most in life?

I’m afraid that all I have ever known and believed is nebulous and will drift away, leaving me with no anchor to who I really am. I’ve grown up in British Colonial India, but what will happen when England pulls out of India next year, 1948? Who am I—British Indian or English? I suspect my brother has fallen in love with Dassah, an Indian woman we’ve both known all our life. I adore Dassah, but English society will never accept her as his wife. And then there’s my own desire for hearth and home. Is Lieutenant Colonel Jack Sunderland the man I want to spend my life with, especially if he leaves India along with the rest of the British soldiers?

5. What do you want out of life?

Nothing excites me more than to see my Indian students light up with new knowledge in my classroom. Jack says that after we get married I can teach in an English school, but why do I feel that India is my home no matter who rules the country? Is there a way for me to remain here in the land I love, and what sort of man would be interested in living that kind of life with me?

6. What is the most important thing to you?

I’m torn these days, as torn in two as India will be when England leaves. Is my family or my calling as an educator more important to me? But that all seems so academic when people are dying in the riots throughout India. My home, my family, even my hero brother, Cam, are not what we used to be. With the help of Lady Mountbatten, Cam is searching all over for Dassah, the only woman he will ever love. These days I have no time to consider what I want. And if I did, would I have the courage to do what my heart says, and pursue my calling as a professor of Theology in India, the country I was born in? Would I have the courage to tell my brother to marry the woman he loves no matter that he is British and she is Indian?

7. Do you read? If so, what is your favorite type of book to read?

In the past I had no time for romantic novels, and usually had my nose in a thick theology tome. But something has changed in me recently with my sister’s wedding and the upheavals in the country. Nowadays, I’m hankering after something that used to be so elusive to me—thoughts of wedding nights, kisses and caresses from a man, a husband. But who on earth could satisfy my academic heart along with my newly discovered passions?

8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

It’s my prayer that I will be less academic in my faith and more hands-on. The Lord put his religion into serving the people around him, and I see my brother Cam suffering. Up to now, I’ve tried to pretend that Cam is not an alcoholic, but he is floundering in emotional pain over losing Dassah. If I am truly a Christian, I must put all that I teach into acts of love and service. With so many people around me who are also suffering, I can start just about anywhere.

9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?

When Cam and I were little we had a pet mongoose, quite the cheeky little thing, and great a killing snakes in the garden. A necessity, I assure you, growing up in British Colonial India.

10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?

I’d like to go back to the time the father of modern missions first came to India. William Carey was an English missionary who brought his skills as a linguist to this country. Not only did Carey translate portions of the Bible into many of the Indian languages, but he wrote many of the Indian languages down for the first time.