Meet a new author in Christian Fiction
Today I’m happy to have debut novelist Katherine Reay here! She just released Dear Mr. Knightley which is available now at LifeWay Christian Stores. I read it a few weeks ago… so much fun! I have a feeling it will make my favorite books of the year list. I’m seeing a lot of good buzz on social media about it as well. Before she comes, let me share with you about her new book.
Samantha Moore has always hidden behind the words of others—namely her favorite characters in literature. Now, she will learn to write her own story—by giving that story to a complete stranger.
Growing up orphaned and alone, Sam found her best friends in the works of Austen, Dickens, and the Brontë sisters. The problem is that she now relates to others more comfortably as Elizabeth Bennet and Jane Eyre than as herself.
Sometimes we lose ourselves in the things we care about most.
But life for this twenty-three-year-old is about to get stranger than fiction, when an anonymous benefactor (calling himself “Mr. Knightley”) offers to put Sam through the prestigious Medill School of Journalism. There is only one catch: Sam must write frequent letters to the mysterious donor, detailing her progress.
As Sam’s program and peers force her to confront her past, she finds safety in her increasingly personal letters to Mr. Knightley. And when Sam meets eligible, best-selling novelist Alex Powell, those letters unfold a story of love and literature that feels as if it’s pulled from her favorite books. But when secrets come to light, Sam is – once again – made painfully aware of how easily trust can be broken.
Welcome, Katherine!
I’m so delighted to get to share a little of Dear Mr. Knightley and the story behind it. It’s Samantha Moore’s tale of self-discovery. She survived a tough childhood by hiding behind literary characters, adopting their personas when scared, in danger or when she needed understanding friends. But as the story opens, this device begins to hurt her (as all hiding eventually does) and others. She must lay it down to find her own voice, her own life and her own story. And we get invited into her journey by reading her letters to Mr. Knightley.
The idea originally came from Jean Webster’s Daddy Long Legs. It’s an epistolary novel as well – and keeping Dear Mr. Knightley in this format was a tough, hard fought choice. A few critiques strongly suggested I change that. But it was right for the story and I’m so grateful Thomas Nelson felt the same. Letters are unique – the reader almost feels like it presents a first person view, but it does not. There’s a delicious layer we see that Sam can’t – there is what she is willing to tell Mr. Knightley, what she tries to withhold and how she interprets events – any or all of which can look to different to us than to her. I loved the format and what I could reveal within it.
The format also allowed me to incorporate my love for Jane Austen in an organic way – as we can see Sam hide, even when she does not, and we watch her discover and recognize the pain it and she causes. And Austen was a fun and meaningful addition because our favorite movies and books play such an important role in our lives. We can relate to that to a degree. In fact, some days I’d like to live within some favorite storylines.
But we can’t live within fiction and that’s part of the point too. I purposely made Sam’s life bigger, tougher, and more challenging than many of us face so that we could more easily sneak into her emotional world and realize her struggles are universal. I think we all strive to define ourselves, face insecurity and fear, seek a place to stand and belong, and search for a family to love. I’d love readers to resonate with this journey, feel emotional camaraderie and understand that an ultimate loving Father exists. And I hope readers find themselves wrapped up in an amazing story.
Katherine Reay has enjoyed a life-long affair with the works of Jane Austen and her contemporaries. After earning degrees in history and marketing from Northwestern University, she worked as a marketer for Proctor & Gamble and Sears before returning to school to earn her MTS. Her works have been published in Focus on the Family and the Upper Room. Katherine currently lives with her husband and three children in Seattle. Dear Mr. Knightley is her first novel.