Melanie tells a good story. Raised as the daughter
of a wealthy merchant, beautiful Annabel is reduced by her family’s debts to a
choice between marriage to a lecherous steward or indentured servanthood in the
household of the “beastly” Lord Ranulf le Wyse. She chooses servanthood, but her troubles are far from over. Lord Ranulf’s brooding manner, eye
patch and physical and emotional scars make him as intriguing to the reader as
he is to Annabel. Her hunger to read God’s Word in an era when Bibles are rare
and even the priest doesn’t own one, makes her long for a cloistered life in a
convent, but is that the future God has for her?
Melanie, I would
ask where you get your ideas, but this is obviously a retelling of the classic
tale, Beauty and the Beast. What made you choose this specific story?
Melanie Dickerson: LeAnne, I have always loved “Beauty and
the Beast,” and it was probably my favorite fairy tale, especially as a teen,
so it was a natural choice. And once I started thinking about it, I quickly
started getting an idea for the story.
LH: Your previous book, The Healer’s Apprentice, (a
retelling of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, set in medieval Germany) is also fourteenth century. What draws
you to that time period?
MD: I just happen to like that particular century. A lot
was going on. Europe had just gone through a devastating plague that had killed
around one-third of the population, and the world was on the brink of great
social and religious upheaval. But I wanted to sort of avoid these two great
upheavals, so I set my stories well before the Reformation, when life was
becoming a little more modern, and yet in many ways, life was still very much
“medieval,” with all the colorful characters that are so uniquely medieval,
like feudal lords, knights, and villeins, stewards, bailiffs, peasants and
priests.
LH: The Merchant’s Daughter is set in the village of Glynval,
England. Is Glynval a real place? Have you been there?
MD: Glynval is a fictional village. I was deliberately
vague about its location. I did a lot of research, looked at many, many photos
of rural England, even went to Google Earth and looked at the topography of
England, especially within a few days’ journey of London. I wanted my village
to be an idyllic place, with all the beauty of the English countryside.
LH: Your character, Annabel, longs to read the Bible for
herself in a period when most people can’t read and copies of the Bible are
transcribed by hand. She assumes that life in a convent is the only way that
she can really be close to God. What would you like readers to take from your
book spiritually?
MD: I would like them to feel, along with Annabel, what a
great blessing it is to be able to read God’s own word, to know what God’s true
thoughts are and what He wants us to understand about him and about the meaning
of life. I want them to come to the conclusion, just as Annabel does, that God
loves them and sent the Bible so that they could know this.
LH: How hard was it to get a publisher to consider the
European setting and the medieval time period?
MD: It was very hard. It took me two years to get an agent
and another year and a half to get a publisher. After being rejected by nearly
every Christian publisher as an adult romance, the Young Adult editor at
Zondervan made an offer on it. But things seem to be opening up more and more,
slowly but surely, for European settings.
LH: Although your books have been published as YA, I'm sure adult romance lovers enjoy them, too. Dare I ask how sales have been in this market that
seems stuck in nineteenth-century America?
MD: Sales have been good, and I can tentatively say that I
do have more books coming out.
LH: More fairy tales in the works?
MD: I have a Snow White story and a Cinderella story—coming
soon!
LH: Thank you for being with us today, Melanie. May the Lord use your books to challenge young people.
BOOK GIVE-AWAY!
Melanie has graciously agreed to give away a copy of The Merchant's Daughter to a reader of this blog. An electronic copy is available so we welcome entries from any place in the world! For a chance to win, leave a comment by Friday, February 3. We'd love for you to tell us your favorite fairy tale and why. Don't forget to leave your e-mail (writing out 'at' and 'dot' to avoid phishers) so I can contact you. (As usual, the odds of winning depend on the number of entries. Void where prohibited by law.)
Interviewer LeAnne Hardy has lived in 6 countries on 4 continents, including the village of Thatcham in West Berkshire, England (which she pictured as she read about Melanie's Glynval). Her historical novel, Glastonbury Tor, is a story of the early Reformation and the Holy Gral. Find out more on her website.
