Interesting - Lynn Austin

Bikes, Boats, and Trees

Last week, Ken and I loaded our bikes onboard the “S.S. Badger” in Ludington, MI for a bicycling excursion with our friends Paul and Jacki. The 71-year-old “Badger” is the last coal-fired passenger steamship in operation in the U.S., ferrying up to 600 passengers and 180 vehicles back and forth across Lake Michigan. The summer day was perfect for our four-hour voyage, with blue skies and calm waters. The lake is so huge that the shoreline was out of sight for most of the journey, leaving a view of the vast, open water all around us.

We had to travel light, packing everything we needed for the overnight trip into our bike’s saddlebags. After an uneventful voyage, we landed in Manitowoc, WI and set off to explore. The city is a very bike-friendly, and we rode the beautiful Mariners’ Trail, a scenic path that goes right along Lake Michigan.

Before long, we came to a serendipitous surprise—the magnificent “West of the Lake Gardens” overlooking Lake Michigan. Pictures can’t convey how breathtaking this privately-owned estate is—and it’s free, and open to the public. I removed my shoes and walked barefoot in the soft, green grass. It was heavenly! I think Eden must have looked like this garden!

We got back on our bikes to explore more parks and beaches in the area before stopping for the night at our hotel in Two Rivers, WI. We ate several great meals on this trip, and even sampled the famous Wisconsin Cheese Curds.

Rain was forecast for the following day, but thankfully, we made it back to Manitowoc without getting wet. Once there, we visited the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, and toured the USS Cobia, a WWII era submarine. One of the museum’s displays chronicled the approximately 1,500 shipwrecks lying beneath Lake Michigan, including “The Phoenix,” which I featured in my novel “Waves of Mercy.”

It was a little unnerving to read about shipwrecks because the stormy weather had arrived with 6-to-8-foot waves by the time we were ready to re-board for the trip home. Rain lashed the ship, which rocked from side to side the entire way, making it a challenge for a land-lubber like me to walk without staggering. But we arrived safely home again, bringing lots of great memories with us.

One of my favorite sights on the trip was this enormous willow tree along the shoreline of the lake. It must be hundreds of years old, and has probably survived hundreds of storms in its lifetime. Psalm 1, which is one of my favorites, compares a righteous person to a thriving tree like this one, planted by the water.

The psalm says that “Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.” It’s much too easy to follow the crowd, walking in the way of popular culture. It’s even easier to sit at our computers and join in with the mockers, ridiculing those we disagree with. But blessed is the person who doesn’t do those things. “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night.”

Someone asked Jesus which was the most important Law—the one we should meditate on day and night. He replied that we must love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves. What would my life be like if I meditated on His words every morning and asked Him to help me love God with all that I am? And what if I asked how I can love my neighbor today? And my enemies? It’s increasingly clear that Christians have enemies in this world who mock us and seek to silence us. When I read the news headlines, fear washes over me like those powerful waves. But God is in control. Perhaps for every hour I spend reading the news, I should spend another hour in prayer!

The psalm ends with this promise: “The Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” When the storms of this world rage, those of us who are righteous in Christ Jesus will look just like that magnificent tree, “planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.” I long to stand tall and solid like that tree.

onAugust 23, 2024August 23, 2024inFaith, Interesting, Life

Coffee or Tea? Which Will it Be?

As newly-weds, my husband and I lived in Bogota, Colombia for two years, a country renowned for its great coffee. I hadn’t acquired a taste for coffee yet, but oh, it smelled SO good! At one of my husband’s orchestral concerts, they served tiny cups of coffee at intermission, and I decided to try one. Did I mention how GOOD it smelled? The coffee was what the Colombians called tinto, and what I’ve since learned is a gigantic wallop of caffeine in a miniature cup. I don’t think I slept for a week!

Years later, we moved to Canada, where my husband performed with another orchestra. My Canadian friends introduced me to tea—not the kind that comes in little bags with dangling strings, but real, looseleaf tea, brewed in a pot. I’ve been swimming against the tide of coffee drinkers ever since.

To me, the main difference between tea and coffee is a matter of speed. We use coffee to wake up and get us going in the morning, brewing it quickly in pod machines and transporting it in large, insulated to-go cups as we race to work or drive the kids to school. We speed to the drive-through at the coffee shop and speed away. We invite friends to “grab a quick cup of coffee” with us.

Tea is entirely different. A true tea drinker seldom goes to the drive-through for a morning cup because to make tea properly takes time. First, the teapot must be warmed, then the water is boiled before being poured over the leaves. It’s left to steep for a few minutes, covered with a tea-cozy to keep it warm. Then you sit and sip from a porcelain teacup and have a leisurely talk with friends. No one invites a friend for a “quick cup of tea.”

The point of coffee is to get you going, usually at a rapid pace so you can multi-task. The point of tea is to slow you down, to relax. It’s something you linger over with good friends and maybe a tiered serving dish with tiny sandwiches and scones. We’ve all heard of tea-sandwiches but I’ve never heard of coffee sandwiches. Coffee is a fast-food, tea is a slow one. It transports us to the past, to a slower, less-demanding pace of life. And yet . . .

My newest book, “All My Secrets,” which debuted this month, takes place during the Gilded Age in the Stanhope family’s 75-room mansion. Nineteen-year-old Adelaide Stanhope lives with rules and expectations for women in her social class that are very restrictive. For example, these are some of the rules of etiquette for an afternoon tea party (borrowed from “The Essential Handbook of Victorian Entertaining” by Autumn Stephens):

Ladies retain their hats throughout the tea, and likewise their gloves. But tea gowns may be worn without a corset.
Request no more than one or two spoonsful of sugar with your tea. Although you may customarily take more, it is ill-bred to do so at someone else’s table.
It is not proper to drink with a spoon in the cup, or to quite drain the cup.
Don’t allow the spoon to clink noisily against the cup as you stir your tea.
Do not extend your small finger upward; this bespeaks of arrogance, not refinement.
Do not peek over the cup at others while you are sipping. Keep your eyes lowered.
Do not overindulge. Black tea, when taken to excess, so acts on the nervous system as to produce sleeplessness and insomnia, and finally makes a complete wreck of its victim.

This is just a small sampling of the rules, but you get the picture. There are even more rules for social calls, luncheons, and dinner parties.

I’m glad we have more freedom than our Victorian ancestors did. Yet as I was writing this novel, I found many parallels to our lives in the Twenty-first Century. Young women like Adelaide—and even older women like me—face a lot of important decisions when it comes to living our best lives. What do we value the most? Love? Money? Family? Work? Faith? What compromises are we willing to make? And how does following Christ fit into it all? These are much more important decisions than whether to have coffee or tea!

The three women in “All My Secrets” are searching for guidance, just like we are. The best approach, I believe, is to let our lives be guided by scripture, not by etiquette books or popular opinion. As the Psalmist wrote, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow His precepts have good understanding” (Psalm 111:10). The Bible is the best handbook, the only handbook, we will ever need.

onFebruary 29, 2024February 29, 2024inBooks, Interesting, Life

The Joy of The Torah

“Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law . . . Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” (Psalm 119:18, 105)

This past year I have been studying the Torah—Genesis through Deuteronomy—with a dear, Jewish friend. She reads each verse in Hebrew, then I read it in English and we discuss it together. The version we’re studying includes short commentaries on the text from Jewish sages. She is also teaching me a little Hebrew, which has increased my understanding of the verses a great deal. We’re in the last book now, and nearly finished, but what we’re doing isn’t a scholarly endeavor. It’s merely two friends from different backgrounds, sharing God’s Word and talking about how it relates to our everyday lives.

I’m also learning a lot about the Jewish holidays from my friend, and the deeper meaning behind them. The latest one, celebrated in the fall, is Simchat Torah, which means “the joy of Torah” in Hebrew. The Jewish people divide the first five books of the Bible into daily portions so they can read the entire Torah in one year. Jews all over the world read the same portion every day, and it’s a tradition to discuss each week’s reading during the Sabbath meal.

On Simchat Torah, the last chapter of Deuteronomy is completed, and the Torah scroll is rolled back to Genesis so they can begin reading all over again. The holiday is celebrated with singing and dancing and great joy. The Torah is taken from the sacred ark where it’s kept and people take turns dancing with it, holding it high above their heads. There’s joy in completing the Torah but also in anticipating a new beginning, reading the familiar stories, and seeing what new insights and lessons can be learned. It’s a reminder that even a lifetime of study can’t exhaust all that the Bible has to offer.

I love the idea of rejoicing and celebrating Holy scripture. The Bible is a treasured gift to us from God that I don’t ever want to take for granted. In it, the Creator of the Universe has revealed Himself to us as “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished” (Exodus 34:6 ). Scripture also reveals who we are—God’s children, created in His image, rescued from sin through faith in Jesus. It instructs us how to live as His redeemed children, and promises a glorious future in heaven with Him. I thank God for the Bible, His holy Word to us.

It was on this beautiful holiday of Simchat Torah that Hamas terrorists massacred and kidnapped more than a thousand innocent men, women, and children in Israel. I don’t believe the day was chosen randomly. For one thing, Israelis were celebrating the holiday and weren’t on high alert. But I also believe that the reason the enemies of the Jewish people have sought to annihilate them throughout the centuries—whether it’s Hamas, Hitler, or Haman—is because Jews are people of The Book. God speaks to us in His Word, and the ultimate goal of His enemies is to silence God and erase all traces of His will for His creation. Without scripture, there is no moral law, so “anything goes.” There is no concept that we’re created in His image, so humans can be slaughtered or abused or enslaved indiscriminately. And without God’s revelation of Who He is, mankind can make gods in their own image and worship them in a multitude of pagan ways.

As Christians, we not only have the heritage of God’s written Word, but also the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who is the Living Word. Do we take advantage of this treasure and read it every day? Most of us faithfully feed our bodies three times a day, but what about feeding our souls? Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 8:3 when He said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). I like to think of daily Bible reading as receiving a daily email from God, reminding me of His great love and instructing me how to live each day. I don’t want to become so busy that His email remains unopened in my inbox.

I wish we had a yearly celebration of joy like Simchat Torah to thank God for speaking to us and showing us the way of salvation. Since we don’t, maybe I’ll borrow the day from my Jewish friends and dance with my Bible in joy and thanksgiving.

onNovember 9, 2023November 9, 2023inFaith, Interesting, Life

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Hint! Hint!

Greetings from Europe! I have now finished my book tour in the Netherlands and I’m off to speak and sign books in Germany tomorrow. If you’ve been following along with me on Facebook and Instagram, I hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures I’ve sent of all the wonderful places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. Here are just a few:

The “parking lot” at the book store. We just can’t get over all the bicycles.

Speaking at a bookstore in Katwijk.

Oh the cheese! Here we are in Gouda, NL

A mixture of old and new, isn’t that amazing?

A beautiful castle in the country.

Houseboats on the canals.

Life and death. This butterfly landed on the lock to a railroad car like the ones that transported Jews.

In between my tours to those two countries I decided to use my free days off to do some research for my next book. Not the one that will be released this coming October. That one is called “Legacy of Mercy” and has already been written and edited and is in production. For readers who enjoyed “Waves of Mercy” you’ll be happy to know that this is the sequel. You’ll get to find out what happens next when Anna returns to Chicago to marry William, and Geesje settles back to her life in Holland. Here’s the cover:

As soon as I finished writing “Legacy of Mercy” I started writing my next book—after treating myself to a short vacation, of course. I’ve already decided where and when that novel will take place and I’ve done a lot of the research. I’ve created my characters and have begun to write their stories. But for me, one of the best things about being a writer is the chance to travel and do on-site research. It helps bring the story to life if I can get a feel for the colors and smells and sounds (and tastes!) in the novel’s setting. That’s what I’ve just finished doing this week. I don’t want to give away too much—it’s too soon for that. But here are a handful of pictures that may offer a hint or two of where my next novel will take place:

Anyone care to guess where I will take readers in my future book?

Don’t forget to enter my contest! I’m shopping for souvenirs and I’d love to send you one of them. Be sure to join my mailing list and like me on Facebook and Instagram to enter. This contest closes when I get home in two weeks. This contest is limited to US residents only.

Tot Ziens!(See you soon.)

onJune 4, 2018January 7, 2019inBooks, Interesting

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10 Things You Might Not Know About Lynn Austin

I grew up in New York State in the Hudson Valley about 60 miles north of New York City. As the middle sister of three, I’m blessed to have two built-in, lifelong, best friends.
I was a huge fan of the Beatles as a teenager and heard them perform in person twice—once in Atlantic City, and once in Shea Stadium in NYC. The stadium held 56,000 screaming Beatles’ fans and afterward it seemed like most of them were trying to board the same subway train home that I was. I was nearly crushed to death but it was worth it, of course.
I left New York to go to Hope College in Michigan where I met my husband Ken. He was a music major and I was struggling through a required music history/appreciation course. He offered to tutor me—and we fell in love. I got an A in the course.
The summer before we married, I worked as an attendant in a mental institution. I was a psychology major in college and wanted some practical experience. Well, I got plenty of it!—along with some valuable insights that help me create realistic characters.
I worked as the secretary to the Dean of Students at Yale while Ken was earning his Master’s degree there. At the time, I had no idea that all the typing I did every day would be good practice for being a writer.
A year after we were married, Ken got a summer job performing with the Alaska Festival of Music. We decided to drive from Connecticut to Anchorage in our tiny, two-seater sports car. Being poor students, we camped out along the way in an army-surplus pup tent and cooked our meals on a propane stove.
After Ken graduated, he won a job performing with the National Symphony Orchestra in Bogota, Colombia. I taught 4^th grade in a Colombian school for a year until our son Joshua was born. I do NOT recommend giving birth for the first time in a foreign language! By the time they laid Josh in my arms, I was so confused I started talking to him in Spanish. Ken said, “What are you doing, Lynn? He speaks English!”
Our son Ben was born in Canada when Ken performed with the Thunder Bay Symphony in Ontario and our daughter Maya was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba when Ken played in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. At least they spoke English in Canada! All three of our children have dual-citizenship.
To research my first novel, “Gods and Kings,” I lived in Israel for a month and volunteered on an archaeological dig. Our son Josh, who was 14, went with me. His dream was to uncover a skull—he and his site team found an entire skeleton!
You may have figured out by now that Ken and I love travel and adventure. We have always kept active, whether it’s skiing (downhill and cross-country), backpacking, hiking in the mountains, and now cycling. We just returned from a 2 ½ week trip to Florida where we pedaled a total of 220 miles. The exercise makes up for all the hours I spend sitting at my desk.

So, do you share any similarities with my crazy life? Any Beatles fans out there? I would love to hear from you!

onFebruary 6, 2017September 6, 2017inInteresting

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Underwater Explorers

Last Saturday I attended a wonderful program by the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association—a group of divers who search for sunken ships in the Great Lakes. I attended their presentation last year and it inspired me to include a shipwreck in my upcoming novel. This is exciting stuff!

These shipwreck experts start their adventures the same way I start a novel—by doing research. They comb through piles of public documents, newspaper reports and eyewitness accounts to narrow down the wreck’s possible location. They search photos and drawings for the ship’s distinguishing details, such as size and profile. This research phase can be a treasure hunt in itself! But if they do their job well, the expedition has a better chance of success when the exploration phase begins.

Exploration involves creating an imaginary grid over the suspected area of the wreck and slowly sailing back and forth, using sonar to detect a sunken ship on the bottom of the lake. Scanning for hours and hours, days on end, sounds tedious to most people, but I sensed the experts’ excitement in this step of the search, too. It requires expertise to examine the grainy sonar pictures and interpret the findings. And when a sunken ship was finally spotted, everyone celebrated. I suppose most people would find my job tedious, sitting at a computer day after day, typing page after page, chapter after chapter until my novel is finished. While it appears to be boring, it takes expertise to create a story and get the words precisely right. And wise authors also celebrate their successes, big and small.

The last phase of underwater discovery is obviously the most enjoyable for these veteran divers. Armed with cameras and scuba equipment, the team finally has a chance to dive on the site and explore the wreck. I watched in fascination as ghostly images of these once-stately ships appeared on the theater screen, encrusted with shells, lying in their final resting places. I listened to the dramatic stories of their demise, usually due to violent storms. The divers became underwater detectives, solving the mystery of why and how each vessel sank, and where the ship and its crew came to their final end.

On one of the deeper dives, the team could spend only 30 minutes exploring the wreck before making the nearly two hour journey back to the surface, pausing to adjust to the changing pressure and avoid the deadly bends. I marveled at such disciplined devotion! Why do these divers do it? Since removing treasure from these wrecks is strictly forbidden, why make such a huge commitment of time and energy and finances to explore a sunken ship?

I suspect that the thrill of diving and solving a century-old mystery are rewards in themselves. But sometimes there are other surprises, too. In the audience on Saturday night was a gentleman who had been ten years old when he lost his father in the wreck of the William B. Davock, sunk during a storm on Lake Michigan seventy-five years ago. His father’s body was never recovered. Thanks to the work of these divers, the now-elderly gentleman was able to see images of his father’s final resting place and find closure after all these years. He sailed with the dive crew to the site on Lake Michigan and placed a memorial wreath in the water above his father’s grave.

I returned home from the program pondering why I write. There is some monetary gain, to be sure, but for me it’s also about the thrill of discovery and the satisfaction of seeing the results of my hard work and discipline in book form. Most of all, it’s about the joy I experience whenever I learn that one of my stories has touched someone’s life. I easily understood the joy those dedicated divers from the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association felt when they saw the tears of an eighty-five year old man who had waited a lifetime to find his father.

onApril 4, 2016June 18, 2016inInteresting, Writing

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King Hezekiah’s Seal

It’s been in the news but you may have missed it during the busy Christmas season. Archaeologists digging near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount have found a stamped clay seal that once belonged to the biblical King Hezekiah. As my readers know, I “wrote the book” on King Hezekiah—three books, in fact, and two more on his son King Manasseh. I used stories from the Old Testament along with my own research to create the five-book “Chronicles of the King” series about King Hezekiah’s life.

The Ophel in Jerusalem near where the seal was discovered

The clay seal that the archaeologists found was stamped with his name: Hezekiah son of Ahaz. It had once been used to seal a papyrus scroll, a document that was probably signed by Hezekiah himself. Archaeologists discovered it in a section of ancient Jerusalem where the king’s palace once stood.

Hezekiah's Broad Wall — Hezekiah’s Broad Wall

I love King Hezekiah! This descendant of King David and ancestor of Jesus Christ ruled from about 715 to 686 BC. And what a life he lived! A contemporary of the prophets Isaiah and Micah, he lived through the exile of Israel’s ten northern tribes by the brutal Assyrians. In fact, so many refugees fled to Jerusalem that Hezekiah enlarged the city and built a new wall around it for protection. A portion can still be seen in Jerusalem’s Old City. Hezekiah also dug a tunnel beneath the city to safeguard his water supply from the Assyrians, bringing water from the Gihon Spring to the newly built Pool of Siloam. He was in such a hurry to finish that his workmen began tunneling from both ends and met in the middle, an engineering marvel. It still carries water (and tourists) beneath Jerusalem.

But what I love most about King Hezekiah, and what inspired me to write all those books about him, was his faith—his imperfect, often wavering, but true-to-the-end faith. I was intrigued by the fact that his wicked father, King Ahaz, sacrificed his sons to the pagan god Moloch, yet Hezekiah launched a religious revival in the first month of his reign, purifying the temple that his father had desecrated. He invited everyone to return to God and celebrate Passover, which hadn’t been kept in decades. Hezekiah’s faith grew as he faced trials. When the Assyrians first attacked, he asked Isaiah to pray for him. When they returned a second time, he went up to the Temple and bowed before God himself, asking Him to save Jerusalem so that all the kingdoms on earth would know that He alone is God.

Hezekiah's Tunnel and Gihon Spring — Hezekiah’s Tunnel and Gihon Spring

Hezekiah’s newly-discovered seal depicts a winged sun. Several news stories questioned his use of a non-Jewish symbol. But knowing what I do of his life, I think it’s a perfect symbol. Hezekiah became seriously ill and Isaiah told him to get his house in order because he was going to die. But Hezekiah prayed and God graciously granted him fifteen more years to live. As a sign that Hezekiah would indeed get well, God “gave wings” to the sun and caused it to briefly retreat backwards.

A few years later, the Assyrians surrounded Jerusalem and demanded Hezekiah’s surrender. Isaiah convinced him to trust God, promising that He would save the city. During the night, the Angel of Death killed 185,000 enemy troops and “the next morning—there were all the dead bodies!” God’s salvation from the Assyrians appeared as the sun was rising—just as centuries later our salvation through Hezekiah’s descendant Jesus Christ would come at dawn on Easter morning.

For a world that believes scripture is made up of fables and fairy tales, that its stories and people are fabricated and embellished, Hezekiah’s newly discovered seal offers proof to those who doubt, that God’s word is Truth.

For more information, try one of these links from December 4, 2015: [email protected]
http://www.timesofisrael.com/seal-bearing-name-of-judean-king-found-in-jerusalem/

onJanuary 4, 2016June 18, 2016inFaith, Interesting

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Rosie the Riveter

I often give a speech at women’s conferences and churches across the country, about how women’s roles have changed through the past centuries. Inevitably, wherever I go, a sweet, grey-haired woman—or two or three—will come up to me afterwards and say, “You know, I was once a Rosie the Riveter.” As I listen to them talk about their jobs in shipyards and aircraft factories, I marvel at how they learned to use welding torches and rivet guns to build submarines and jet airplanes. The women all smile sweetly and say something like, “Oh, but we just did what we had to do.”

onMarch 18, 2013June 18, 2016inInteresting, Life

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Dorothea Dix

I’m so honored to be part of the amazing group of women writers. And I’m excited about introducing you to Dorothea Dix.

As a Baby Boomer, I was fortunate to grow up in an era where girls were encouraged to pursue a college education. But when it came time to apply to colleges and choose a career, I discovered that most adults, including my high school guidance counselor, still believed that the only acceptable careers for women were as teachers or nurses. They made it seem as though I should be grateful for those two options!

onMarch 4, 2013June 18, 2016inInteresting, Life

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