Fireweed - Blog Tour, Fun Facts and Giveaway

Lisel Spann has dreamed only of wonderful things in her future. Living with her father, sister, and brother in a cramped apartment in Berlin, the small family shares what seems to be an unbreakable spirit of love and security. However, with the rise of the Nazi party and approaching dark clouds of war, any kind of future grows increasingly uncertain. Knowing little of hate and destruction, Lisel is ill prepared as the storms of battle erupt in full fury and loved ones are taken from her as her beautiful city is reduced to rubble.

With fear and despair rising within, it is through her quiet, compassionate father that Lisel discovers faith and hope. Now, in a desperate journey to find her sister, Lisel and her neighbor flee Berlin and the advancing Russians for Frankfurt, a city under the protection of the Allies. But their flight to safety is filled with pain, hunger, and terror. However, with spiritual lessons and blessings from her father, the support of departed loved ones, and her tried but undying faith in a loving Heavenly Father, perhaps Lisel can emerge like the fireweed—rising strong and beautiful from scorched earth —transforming bitterness and despair into a charity that never faileth.

Pre-Order Link: http://www.amazon.com/Fireweed-Terry-Montague/dp/168047636X/ref

When I was about three, my mom said, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I think she was expecting me to say, “A mommy, like you.” Instead, I popped off with,
“I want to be a writer.” I can still remember her face. She said, “Well, don’t you think you need to learn to read first?” I didn’t think so.

Terry Bohle Montague is a BYU graduate and a free-lance writer, having written for
television, radio, newspaper, and magazines including The Ensign and Meridian
Magazine. She has also been published as the author of book length historical non-fiction and fiction.

Her non-fiction work includes the book, Mine Angels Round About, the story of the LDS West German Mission evacuation of 1939 which occurred only days before the Nazi invasion of Poland.

Her LDS fiction, Fireweed, is loosely based on her interviews with the evacuated West German missionaries and their
families.

Terry studied with Dwight Swain and Jack Bickham, as well as David Farland. Her writing awards include those from LDS Storymakers, Idaho Writers’ League, and Romance Writers of America.

Social Media Links –
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13861974.Terry_Montague
https://www.terrybmontague.com/

Facts about the Author (Top Ten List, but actually there are 14)

We live in an agricultural community where it can be a tough scrabble to make a living. A lot of folks here don’t take care of their animals in a humane way. I talked to two other like-minded women in our valley and, together, we founded a feline rescue that serves seven counties. We’ve placed kitties all over the west and north-west. Because one of the other partners is also a writer, we’re thinking of doing an anthology of amazing cat rescue stories. And, boy, do we have a bunch of them! See magicatsrescue.org.

In that same vein, two summers ago, I got a phone call from a real estate agent who was handling an abandoned property. My daughter and I went out there, thinking we’d probably find a half-dozen abandoned cats. Before we got out of the car, we counted 57. All starving. Many very ill. Some injured. Overwhelming smell of decomposition. We opened the car doors and many tried to get in. We didn’t stop them because we wanted to get out of there, too.
My husband, Quinn, helped me move the furniture out of our living room and rip out the carpet. We set up six very large dog cages that hosted moms and babies. Then, we filled three of our seven bedrooms with the youngsters and adults. In the end, we had more than eighty. We lost only one. And placed all the rest. Whew! (It was Quinn’s idea to tell you that side of our quirky life.)

My mom’s family is descended from William Boleyn who was Mary and Anne’s grandfather. (That’s sort of icky, isn’t it?)

My mom’s other ancestors came to this country in the mid-1600s and settled in the Massachusetts and Chesapeake Bay colonies. They didn’t come for religious freedom, though. They came for the buck. I have to qualify that a bit, though, because some of them were Huguenots. Funnily enough, they had “issues” with their Quaker neighbors.

As a teenager, I went to a French girls’ school on the coast of Brittainy (Bretagne). Our school was south of the Normandy beaches and not far from Mont St. Michel. Mmmm, crepes.

My dad’s parents were German colonists in what is now Ukraine. They were pushed out of Germany by the Napoleonic Wars, Protestant/Catholic persecutions, and crop failures. Then, more than a hundred years later, they were run out of Russia by the German-hating Bolsheviks. Our family came to the U.S. looking for homesteading land and wound up on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota. The dust bowl drove them west, into Idaho where we are now. We like to say we were run out of two countries and across a third.
My German-Russian grandmother was a midwife/healer who practiced Brauche. That’s a special calling that is matriarchal and believed to be mystical, too. There are certain kinds of prayers offered in the practice as well as incantations and the use of religious objects. Stereotypically, Brauchers are always surrounded by animals, especially birds and cats. Before my grandmother’s family left Germany, Brauche was considered witchcraft. In Russia, it was considered “religion”. In South Dakota, the medical doctors tried to stop if.

I’d been studying with Dave Farland/Wolverton and we were talking about the healer as a character . I told him about my grandmother and Dave suggested I might be a witch. I’m okay with that as long as everyone calls me Glinda, I get to wear the pink dress and the crown, and carry that amazing wand.

This is really quirky. With all my British and German ancestry, genetically, I’m Asian. (Our Mongolian foster daughter is laughing!)

Sometimes, my husband buys a dilapidated house for me to rehab. For me, it’s like Barbie and her Dream House. Except the last one had an alligator in the basement. After I could stand up again and my ears stopped ringing from all the screaming, I realized the poor thing was dead. I had a great idea! I put it on the basement stairs landing, then called Quinn and told him there was something wrong in the basement then I went home. He called back later and said he couldn’t see anything wrong in the basement. He’d stepped right over the dead alligator!
I guess the ghost who lived there didn’t appreciate my sense of humor because, after the alligator incident, every time I walked through the back yard, I was pelted by crabapples from an unseen source. The neighbors told me it was probably Marvin, the cranky, previous owner who died in the house.
We have named the alligator Marvin.