Welcome to A Spot of Story with Danielle Grandinetti. Cozy up with your favorite beverage as we chat about sweet romance, thrilling suspense, and fascinating history. Perhaps you'll find your next read in one of these stories.
On this episode of A Spot of Story: Echoes of History, we are diving back into the 1930s to talk about my very first historical romance, To Stand in the Breach.
To Stand in the Breach was published five years ago now. I'm not sure how time has flown that much. I have now released 21 historical romances, which is incredible, from novellas to full-length novels—and I guess one of those is a contemporary romance with Love Inspired as well. Almost all of my books are set during the 1930s. So I thought I'd talk a little bit about To Stand in the Breach since it was book number one—not only how it came about, but why I started with that particular book.
Five, I guess it would be six years ago now, I contracted to write A Strike to the Heart with a small press. As I was working on that particular story, one of the side characters, Dr. Katy, caught my attention. She was the heroine's best friend, and the heroine's brother was also intriguing. So this best-friend's-brother romance just started churning in my mind.
I went to my editor and asked whether the publishing company would be interested in a prequel novella. They didn't do novellas, but they gave me permission to write it and publish it myself. My editor graciously agreed to be my freelance editor for it, and so I began my first foray into becoming an independently published author.
Five years ago, it released, and I discovered how much I loved being an independently published author. I love working with small presses. I love working with Love Inspired. Having done all of it, each option has things that I love about them. Challenges, of course, but I love the variety and I love the opportunities that have come along over the last five years.
So back to To Stand in the Breach. As I was exploring writing this particular story, A Strike to the Heart was about the dairy strikes in 1933 Wisconsin. The heart of that particular story was the height of the dairy strikes. But there were two other strikes that happened in the same year, each progressively worse as the farmers tried to get the attention of the market, the government, and the powers that be to affect dairy prices because they were so low. Honestly, 1933 was the heart of the Great Depression.
As I was writing A Strike to the Heart, I realized there was more to the story, and Katy's story was the perfect opportunity to explore this. At the same time, I came across a horrifying piece of history about the Magdalene Laundries. These were essentially asylums or workhouse jails for women who had children out of wedlock or were accused of promiscuous behavior. Frankly, the thing that shocked me most was that if a woman was considered too attractive, she was viewed as a potential stumbling block and could also be placed in one of these Magdalene Laundries. They were horrific places to be, and you couldn't leave.
Using that history, I was able to give my character a backstory on how this Irish woman came to America searching for a new life. She became one of the first female vets in the country. Female veterinarians began emerging in the early 1900s, so she was probably part of the next generation taking root and securing licenses—which was a fun little piece of history to include in my story.
So she is in this small, rural town in Wisconsin and comes face-to-face with this dairy strike as she tries to encourage the farmers to remember the cows. This is something dairy farmers rarely forget; they love their animals. Especially small-town dairy farmers—the cows are their livelihood, their life, and they do everything to protect them.
What I wanted to show in the course of To Stand in the Breach was how these farmers were caught between a rock and a hard place. They wanted to protect their animals and needed to milk and care for them, but they were also losing money. Having a large-animal vet as my heroine was the perfect opportunity to dive into some of those nuances when it came to the dairy strikes.
I covered the first two dairy strikes—one in mid-February and the other in May. Through the course of the story, I was able to dive into that history while wrapping up Katy's background with the Magdalene Laundries.
That book was a huge learning opportunity for me. I love how the story turned out, I love the characters, and it will always hold a special place in my heart. Five years and 20-some books later, I know there are areas I would love to have done better—perhaps not left it as a long novella, but turned it into a short novel instead. But it is still one of my favorite books that I've written.
I absolutely loved writing Katy's character, and it was fun to carry that through when I got my rights back to A Strike to the Heart to rebrand the series. I ended up writing a Christmas novella to cap off the series, and it was such fun to rebrand it, see the entire Unexpected Protectors theme run through all three books, and have Katy appear in all three.
One other fun little tidbit: she has a donkey! I'm not sure why I gave her a donkey, other than she was a single woman who needed a farm animal, and a horse would have been too much for her to handle at the time—until she ends up rescuing a draft horse, which was a whole other plotline in the story. I packed a lot into what is considered a novella, but it was so much fun. She has this donkey named Glen, who I absolutely fell in love with, so it was wonderful to let Glen have his moment in the spotlight in the Christmas novella that wraps up the series.
So that's a little bit of the background and history behind To Stand in the Breach, my very first historical romance. If you are interested in getting yourself a copy, I'll include all the links below. It's available in eBook, paperback, and audiobook. My audiobook narrator did an absolutely phenomenal job with Katy's accent, and I loved how she portrayed her as a character.
Thank you for joining me today for this episode of A Spot of Story: Echoes of History. I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about my large-animal vet, Katy, and my very first historical romance.
Thank you for listening to A Spot of Story with Danielle Grandinetti. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Let us know by leaving a comment below, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Discover more information about today's book by visiting A Spot of Story online at daniellegrandinetti.com/podcast. Happy reading!
