A Light on the Veranda by Ciji Ware

I enjoy Ciji Ware’s novels, and I really enjoyed reading Midnight on Julia Street last year.  After the book ended, I did wonder what happened to Daphne Duvallon (sister of the male lead) after her dramatic exit from her wedding in Chapter One.  A Light on the Veranda solves that mystery and gives Daphne’s backstory as well as her life after the wedding disaster.

Daphne Duvallon is a classical harpist in New York City, but she is fired for taking off the weekend of a very important concert to play at the wedding of her brother King to Corlis McCullough in Natchez, Mississippi.  While in Natchez, Daphne decides to stay for a while and try her dream at playing jazz harp in a band.  It helps that she has met a handsome photographer, Sim Hopkins.  Unfortunately her old finance, Jack Ebert is also on the scene to make sure that Daphne does not have her happily ever after.

While in Natchez, Daphne starts to “time slip” to the late eighteenth century to the life of her ancestress, a tragic harpist named Daphne Whitaker.  With a mad mother and father, Daphne Whitaker looks for love in all of the wrong places and does what she can just to survive.

I really enjoyed A Light on the Veranda; I liked it even more than the Midnight on Julia Street.  It was fun to read more about some of my favorite characters from Midnight on Julia Street, but A Light on the Veranda can stand alone without having read the prior book.  I am a great fan of “time slip” novels and while Daphne Whitaker’s story was tragic, it was very, very interesting to read about the history of Natchez from the visit by Marie Antoinette’s cousin, Louise-Philippe, the duc d’Orleans, to the devastating tornado of 1840.  The plantations and mansions of Natchez and the surrounding area are true stars of the novel.  I really would love to visit there now! 

Overall, A Light on the Veranda is a wonderful time-slip novel with riveting stories both in the present and the past and delightful characters.  I enjoyed the love story between Daphne Duvallon and Sim.  To read more about this novel, check out this great discussion with CijiWare that was posted on Laura’s Reviews last month.

Book Source:  Review Copy from Sourcebooks.  Thank-you!

Winner of A Light on the Veranda by Ciji Ware

I'm sorry that I have been missing in action the past few weeks.  I will have some exciting personal/professional news to hopefully share soon, but overall work, teaching, and kids have been keeping me very busy with little sleep lately!

Now looking at my giant stack of books/audiobooks that I need to catch up on writing reviews makes me slightly depressed.  I think I will write mini-reviews this week to try to get myself caught back up . . . so stay tuned!

First of all, I have a winner to announce.  The winner of the wonderful novel, A Light on the Veranda by Ciji Ware is Colleen Turner!!  Thank-you for commenting on Ciji Ware's wonderful interview.  I hope that you enjoy the book as much as I did.  I have notified Colleen by email.  She has one week to respond with her mailing address.  If I don't hear from her by that time, I will select a new winner.  Colleen was chosen using random.org.

I will post the winner of The Three Colonels by Jack Caldwell next.  I will hopefully have a new giveaway up soon so stay tuned.

A Discussion with Ciji Ware, author of A Light on the Veranda (and GIVEWAY!)

Did you always have a sequel planned for Midnight on Julia Street?

 Julia Street’s sequel came about for one simple reason: my editor, as soon as she reached the last page of that book, called me and demanded to know, “What ever happened to the young woman in Chapter One who blew off her wedding in front 500 guests in New Orleans’ St. Louis Cathedral? Did she ever dare show her face again down South?

I stammered, “Uh….I don’t know…ah…let me see…she went back to New York with her tail between her legs and—“

 The editor interrupted with, “Well, you have to let us know the fate of that poor girl! Bring her back to New Orleans!”

 However, I didn’t want to do a second book set in the same historic city, and a wonderful writer friend of mine, Michael Llewellyn who lived in New Orleans then, was working on a novel based on a real-life mystery he called The Goat Castle Murder (which is being published this year, by the way).

“Why don’t you set Daphne’s story in Natchez, Mississippi—the Town That Time Forgot? It’s three hours due north of New Orleans. We two could have a blast researching it up there at the same time.”

 And so, the sequel, A Light on the Veranda was born! (And we did have a blast researching and writing both books!).

 What in particular drew you to Daphne as a character? I’ve always been interested in what I call “cross-road moments”—moments when decisions are made that, looking back, mark an entirely new path for the decision-maker. In the case of Daphne Duvallon in A Light on the Veranda, she had been a minor character in Midnight on Julia Street, appearing in Chapter One, and then disappearing for the rest of that book…but what a role she’d played!

She had been forced by circumstances to decide in a split second in front hundreds of New Orleans’ movers-and-shakers at the “Wedding of the Season” whether to bind her life to a man whose eleventh-hour betrayals proved that he definitely did not have her best interests at heart. What drew me to her even more was that she had the courage to run out of that church, even though the wedding cost many thousands of dollars and her parents had planned for her to marry Jack Ebert since Daphne and he were toddlers.

Years ago a close friend of mine, then in his late twenties, described to me in chilling detail the dread he felt on his wedding day watching his bride walk toward him down the aisle. Horrified, I remember asking him, “But why did you get engaged in the first place?” He looked at me with a sad smile, “Well, we were seniors in college and it was either get married or break up. I just sort of drifted into what everyone in both our families expected of us.” But couldn’t you, I persisted, have gotten out of it between the time you got engaged and the actual wedding?” He pointed to the table setting in front of us at the restaurant where we were having dinner. “The day after we told her parents we‘d gotten engaged, her mother ordered a huge set of silverware engraved with my initial. Hey, I was twenty-one years old…I just couldn’t bring myself to call it off.”

 The fact that Daphne had the guts to explain from the very altar why she couldn’t go through with the ceremony filled me with admiration and made me want to explore her story further.

 Will there be any “time slips” in this novel?Oh, yes indeed! In fact, in both A Cottage by the Sea, and Midnight on Julia Street I had been thoroughly caught up exploring the idea of what I termed “genetic memory” and the possibility that the emotional effects of traumatic events that may have happened to one’s ancestors could echo down through the centuries, affecting the lives of their descendants many generations removed. Since I decided to send Daphne from her refuge in New York City back to her southern roots, what better place than Natchez, Mississippi –known as The Town That Time Forgot”—to continue the idea of a modern woman mysteriously uncovering startling events had happened to her namesake ancestress that had eerie parallels in her own life? Whereas in Cottage, the trigger that catapulted the heroine back in time was the sense of touch and in Julia Street, the sense of smell, in Veranda, every time Daphne hears certain sounds—especially music--back she goes to the 1840s when Cotton was King.

 What was your inspiration for the Duvallon family?
 I’ve been going to New Orleans since I was ten-years-old (supposedly I had ancestors there in the 1840s who were, in the words of my late Great Aunt Marge, “run out of town on a rail”), but in the 1990s I had an idea to do another time-slip novel set in a southern American city that had ancient ties with Europe, and the Big Easy seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

When I arrived there, through friends of friends, I met several people whose families had been part of the fabric of that amazing place for generations. One of my “guides” was kind enough to show me the stunning, palatial house in the famed Garden District where he’d grown up, as well as the lovely country place on the edge of a bayou that the family still owned. As we talked, I heard a tale of generations that had, on one hand, been leaders in society, business, and government in Louisiana, and yet had produced nothing but tangled, unhappy relationships--along with dark, well-kept family secrets—all of which had resulted in decades of misery and misunderstanding. Very gothic it all seemed to this westerner, born and bred in sunny California, and but utterly compelling and fascinating. And thus the convoluted Duvallon clan was born. You’ll meet them all in the new release of A Light on the Veranda.

 I’ve enjoyed this discussion very much, so many thanks for the invitation to visit with you! I welcome readers and visitors at www.cijiware.com. You can also connect with me at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ciji-Ware-Novelist/102621349810555


Thank-you for stopping by Ciji Ware!  I loved your answers and have enjoyed reading your novels!

Giveaway Details

Sourcebooks has graciously offered a giveaway of one copy of A Light on the Veranda by Ciji Ware.

If you would like to win a copy of this book please leave a comment about what intrigues you about the this book or this discussion with Ciji Ware.

As part of your comment, you must include an email address. If I can't find a way to contact you I will draw another winner.

For an additional entry, blog about this giveaway or post it on your sidebar. Provide a link to this post in your comment.

I will be using random.org (or a monte carlo simulation in excel) to pick the winners from the comments.

This contest is only open to US and Canadian residents (Sorry!).

No P.O. Boxes.

The deadline for entry is midnight, Friday March 30th, 2012.

Good luck!

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: 2011 Wrap-up & 2012 Sign-up

In January 2011, I joined the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge for the first time.  I love many genres of fiction, but my ultimate favorite genre is historical fiction.  I joined this challenge with the goal of reading 20 historical fiction novels in 2011.  I reached my goal by reading a total of 24 historical fiction novels this past year.  The novels I read were as follows:

1.  Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
2.  Pale Rose of England by Sandra Worth
3.  I am the Chosen King by Helen Hollick
4.  Sins of the House of Borgia by Sarah Bower
5. To Defy a King by Elizabeth Chadwick
6.  Legacy by Jeanette Baker
7.  A Race to Splendor by Ciji Ware
8.  A Fierce Radiance by Lauren Belfer
9.  The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Conner McNees
10.  When We Danced on Water by Evan Fallenberg

11.  Mary of Carisbrooke by Margaret Campbell Barnes

12.  The King's Witch by Cecelia Holland
13.  Queen of the Summer Stars by Persia Woolley
14.  Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
15.  Sea Witch by Helen Hollick
16.  Before Versaille by Karleen Koen
17.  Becoming Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey
18.  Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer
19.  Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick
20.  The Betsy-Tacy Treasury by Maud Hart Lovelace
21.  Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
22.  A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick (audio)
23.  The Help by Kathryn Stockett (audio)
24.  My Love, My Enemy by Jan Cox Speas

I read many excellent historical fiction novels this year, there is not a bad one in this bunch!  Which ones were my favorite?  Stay tuned the next week or so for my top ten books from 2011.  More than one book from this list is on my top ten for the year!

Twenty-two of these books were old-fashioned paper novels, while two were audiobooks.  The two audiobooks were books I had read in the past that were chosen for one of my book clubs this year.  I chose to explore them in a new format this time around.  Five of the twenty-four books were re-reads for me including Water for Elephants, Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, A Reliable Wife, and The Help.  It's safe to say these are some of my favorite books of all time.

I read a few children's historical fiction novels this year including Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie to my children and The Betsy-Tacy Treasury for me. The Little House series is how I started my love for historical fiction.  I'm now hoping to foster the love in my children.

It's no secret that I love to read historical fiction novels related to kings and queens, but I also enjoy historical fiction novels set in America (Little House, Betsy-Tacy, My Love, My Enemy, A Fierce Radiance, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, The Help, A Reliable Wife, and Water for Elephants).  My Love, My Enemy was the most surprising book for me this year.  The cover screamed trashy romance, but the inside was a quite good historical fiction novel set during the American war of 1812.  I would love read more novels by Jan Cox Speas and I hope they find a more suitable cover.

I very much enjoyed this challenge and I'm signing up for the Historical Fiction Challenge 2012 also hosted by Historical Tapestry.  This year I'm aiming for  level 3, Struggling the Addiction: 10 books.  I'm going to focus on the Victorian Challenge this year so I'll hopefully be reading more classics and straight non-fiction history this year. 

I'm hoping that I'll be reading more of one of my favorite sub-genres, the historical fiction thriller this year.  It is a favorite of my Kewaunee Library Book Club.  Now that the club is back on track after a 1.5 year hiatus, I can hope that we get back to some great books!

Midnight on Julia Street by Ciji Ware

Midnight on Julia Street is an intriguing novel that is hard to place neatly in a genre category. This novel is one of my favorite types of novels, one that involves time through time, even if it is not physical travel.

Corlis McCullough is a journalist who likes to get to the heart of the story no matter the cost to her career. She is on her sixth city in her profession, New Orleans, taping what should be a routine wedding when events unfold that make the wedding must see TV. Corlis also discovers that her college nemesis, King Duvallon, is the brother of the bride. Airing the wedding footage against the advice of her colleagues, Corlis finds herself out of a job, but also back in the sights of King Duvallon. Together they become unlikely partners in the crusade to prevent a historic building from getting demolished to put up a skyscraper hotel.

Corlis McCullough starts having flashes to the past in which she relives moments in her ancestor’s, Corlis Bell McCullough, life. She soon discovers that many of the players in her present fight to save the Selwyn buildings are the descendants of many of the same players that originally built them. The historic figures had scandalous love affairs and also tales of corruption that helped to make the buildings possible.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I thought both Corlis’s present situation and flashes to the past were equally interesting. I love that she was a hard hitting reporter and that her fight was the fight to save historic buildings. I find such things very intriguing. Her chemistry with King Duvallon was white hot. Duvallon being a professor of architectural history only made him more interesting to me. I also really wanted to learn the mystery of how the historic figures worked together and often against each other to get the buildings constructed.

My favorite secondary character was Corlis’s feisty Aunt Margery McCullough, a hard-hitting retired reporter. She offers Corlis sage advice and interesting tales about her days working as a reporter as part of the Hearst empire.

I love time travel in all forms. I thought Corlis’s time flashes were very unique. Her sense of smell triggered past remembrances and gave her a view point mostly of her ancestor’s past, but also of other intriguing characters.

I loved the New Orleans setting. The descriptions of the City and of the food were very vivid, and made me really want to visit the grand city even more. The history in the novel was very intriguing. I had no idea that 45% of the African Americans pre-civil war in New Orleans were free people of color. It made me want to learn more about this unique history in our nation.

Overall Midnight on Julia Street is an exceptional novel that manages to combine both modern day and historical elements to create one fascinating read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was ready to join the fight to save the historic buildings.

Book Source: Advance Review Copy from Sourcebooks. Thank-you!

Winner of A Race to Splendor

There was much interest in A Race to Splendor by Ciji Ware, but unfortunately there can only be one winner. That one lucky winner is RivkaBelle of A Word's Worth. RivkaBelle was chosen using random.org and has been notified via email. She has until next Wednesday, May 4th, to send me her mailing address. If I don't hear from her, a new winner will be chosen.

Thank-you to author Ciji Ware for a fantastic guest post, to Beth of Sourcebooks for allowing me to host this giveaway, and to all of you who entered and left great comments. I hope you are all able to pick up this book and enjoy it as much as I did!

Sad you didn't win? I still have a giveaway going until this Friday for What Would Mr. Darcy Do? by Abigail Reynolds as seen on the right sidebar. I also have a new giveaway that will be posted shortly.

A Race to Splendor by Ciji Ware

As an engineer, one of my pet peeves has been the lack of books, movies, and TV shows with engineers as characters, let alone a woman engineer. I was more than a little excited to read A Race to Splendor in which the main character is a female architect in San Francisco in 1906 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. I love reading about strong women characters, and an added bonus is having the strong woman as an engineer/architect.

Amelia Bradshaw has worked hard. As a thirty-year old woman in 1906, she has received her bachelor’s degree in engineering at UC Berkley and her degree in architecture from L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. After receiving her degree in architecture, she returned home to San Francisco, only to discover that her father has gambled away her and her mother’s inheritance, the grand Bay View Hotel. J.D. Thayer, the scoundrel son of a respected San Francisco family is now the proud owner of the hotel. Amelia is devastated. She takes J.D. to court, only to discover, as a woman, she has no rights and is left with nothing. Amelia takes a job at Julia Morgan’s (the first female architect in California) firm to support herself, her mother, and her aunt. Tragedy strikes when the devastating San Francisco earthquake and fire takes place.

Afterwards Amelia finds herself working hard with Julia Morgan’s firm to not only restore the famous Fairmont Hotel, but also to help J.D. rebuild the Bay View Hotel. After a misunderstanding with Julia, Amelia finds herself helping J.D. in a race to build the Bay View by the first anniversary of the quake before the Fairmont Hotel can open.

I loved A Race to Splendor. Ciji Ware’s storytelling was fantastic. Just when you think things are going well, a new wrench gets thrown into the mix. I read this book pretty quickly as I was always wondering what would happen next. The earthquake and fire description were riveting. It reminded me of one of my favorite movies, San Francisco starring Clark Gable.
Speaking of Clark Gable and his bad boy appeal, J.D. is a man made in the same mold. J.D. is the bad boy you want to hate, but love any way. He has a single minded dedication to make something of himself, but he doesn’t think of the costs to other people. While he appears to be a bad guy at the beginning of the novel, Amelia is able to peel back the layers to discover an inner depth to J.D. I was annoyed that Amelia worked for him after he stole her grandfather’s hotel from her, but I can also see that if your family hotel has to be redesigned that you would want to be the one to do it!

I love Ciji Ware’s mantra that she wonders what women were doing at that point in history. I loved that Amelia Bradshaw is a strong woman character and that she interacts with the real Julia Morgan. I think it is more than great to have a woman character that was an engineer/architect, especially at that point in history. It’s still hard work for a woman to be on a construction site as an engineer (I am one and have had the experience!). I loved reading about Amelia and Julia taking charge at the construction sites and getting work done. It was great!

I could talk about this book forever, but overall, I think it is a great historical fiction novel. It has great action, the San Francisco Earthquake, romance, and the best for me – a woman engineer/architect. This month is the 105th anniversary of the great San Francisco earthquake; do you really need another reason to read this book?

For a great guest blog by author Ciji Ware and a chance to win a copy of this book, please check out this link.

A Race to Splendor is my eighth item for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2011.

Book Source: Review Copy from Sourcebooks – Thanks!

My inspiration for Writing about a Female Architect druring the Early Twentieth Century by Ciji Ware (and GIVEAWAY)

Laura: I am an engineer and I am very excited to read your book as the main character is a female architect during a time when such a career was not typical. What inspired you to write about a female architect during the early twentieth century?


Ciji: In virtually all of my historical novels, I’ve always asked the question “What were the women doing during this particular era?” When I moved to San Francisco in 1998 and learned that our apartment on Nob Hill was designed and built in the aftermath of the horrific 1906 San Francisco earthquake and firestorm by California’s first licensed woman architect…well, I had to find out more about Julia Morgan.

I chose to tell the story of the rebuilding of San Francisco through the lens of a composite character, Amelia Hunter Bradshaw, based on the lives of men and women who either had worked for or knew Morgan during her rebuilding of the fabled Fairmont Hotel by the first anniversary of the quake: April 18, 1907. The speedy opening of the city’s finest hostelries was key to signaling the world that San Francisco would, indeed, rise from the ashes. I was so thrilled to be able to tell a new generation of Americans about the significant role this pioneering woman architect played in the city’s rebirth.

Julia Morgan, probably best known for designing and building “Hearst Castle” in central California for the newspaper baron, William Randolph Hearst, was born in 1972 to a well-to-do family who encouraged both the boys and girls in her family to seek education in whatever fields interested them. Julia, whose father was a civil engineer, was the only woman in her graduating class of 1894 at UC Berkeley to earn her degree in the engineering department. Mentored by San Francisco architect Bernard Maybeck who taught Julia geometry during her undergraduate days, she soon went on to be the first woman in the world to earn her credential as an architect from the famed L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1902.

Within four years of her return to San Francisco from her studies in Europe, her beloved city was rocked by a tremendous earthquake at 5:12a.m. on April 18, 1906. The temblor and subsequent fire ravaged some 2,831 acres of the city, destroyed thirty schools, eighty churches, and left 250,000 of 400,000 San Franciscans living in tens and shacks for up to two-and-a-half years.

Morgan was only 34-years-old when the quake struck, but suddenly her little firm had more business than it knew what to do with, including the commission to restore the wounded Fairmont Hotel whose floors had fallen some seven feet. She and her colleagues attempting to revive “the Jewel of Nob Hill” entered into a competition with the city’s other hotels to open their doors by the one-year anniversary.

It was this rivalry that developed between the owners of such landmarks that formed the core of my novel about women who pitted themselves in a world dominated by men and yet succeeded in “putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again.” Morgan and her allies soon discovered that their competitors wouldn’t hesitate to employ daring, cunning and a variety of corrupted political ploys to rebuild their lives and fortunes in the face of such monumental tragedy.

If Morgan and her hand-picked employees had not been so well-schooled in engineering as well as design, I doubt that the magnificent Fairmont Hotel would be the enduring beaux arts beacon it has become for the City by the Bay.

Given the recent events of the quakes in Japan and Haiti; Hurricane Katrina, the Tsunami in Indonesia, and the BP Oil Spill, I hope you will be as swept away as I was by the story of how communities can recover from events that shake buildings and lives from their very foundations. For more information on A Race to Splendor, and my other historical novels, you’re most welcome to visit www.cijiware.com

Giveaway Details

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Sourcebooks has been kind enough to offer one copy of A Race to Splendor by Ciji Ware for a giveaway.

If you would like to win a copy of A Race to Splendor, please leave a comment about what intrigues you about the novel or this guest blog.

As part of your comment, you must include an email address. If I can't find a way to contact you I will draw another winner.

For an additional entry, blog about this giveaway or post it on your sidebar. Provide a link to this post in your comment.

I will be using random.org (or a monte carlo simulation in excel) to pick the winners from the comments.

This contest is only open to US and Canadian residents (Sorry!).

No P.O. Boxes.

The deadline for entry is midnight, Friday April 22nd.

Good luck!

A Cottage by the Sea by Ciji Ware

Blythe Barton Stowe has just endured a terrible Hollywood divorce, made more terrible by the fact that her famous director husband cheated on her with her sister Ellie while she tended to their dying grandmother back in Wyoming. Determined to put the past behind her, Blythe travels to Cornwall to find out if she is connected to the past of a Blythe-Trevelyans manor home, which is currently owned by Luke Teague. Once at the manor house, Blythe finds herself attracted to Luke and also experiencing strange flashes back into the past of her erstwhile ancestor, Blythe Barton.

I really enjoyed A Cottage by the Sea. The novel was a thoroughly modern story with a historical fiction twist. It was different from most books I’ve read and I loved the difference. I also loved the many references to one of my favorite authors, Daphne Du Maurier, and many of her classic works. The only one I haven’t read yet that was mentioned is Hungry Hill. It sitting sadly on my shelf, waiting to be lined up in my reading cue! Overall, I had a very hard time putting the book down and found myself staying up late into the night to see what would happen next in both the modern and historical stories. I loved this book and highly recommend it!

Book Source: Advance Review Copy from Sourcebooks. Thank-you!