Welcome to the Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt! If you’ve just discovered the hunt, be sure to start at Stop #1, and collect the clues through all the stops, in order, so you can enter to win one of our top 5 grand prizes!
- The hunt BEGINS on 3/18 at noon MST with Stop #1 at LisaTawnBergren.com.
- Hunt through our loop using Chrome or Firefox as your browser (not Explorer).
- There is NO RUSH to complete the hunt–you have all weekend (until Sunday, 3/21 at midnight MST)! So take your time, reading the unique posts along the way. Our hope is that you discover new authors/new books and learn new things about them.
- Submit your entry for the grand prizes by collecting the CLUE on each author’s scavenger hunt post and submitting your answer in the Rafflecopter form at the final step, back on Lisa’s site. Many authors are offering additional prizes along the way!
Hello! My name is Heidi Chiavaroli and I write New England-based dual timeline stories. I love a great contemporary story, and a great historical story, so I usually combine the two! You can learn more about me and my books here on my site and on Facebook, Twitter, BookBub, and Instagram. My newest release surrounds some of the history behind Louisa May Alcott and her time as a nurse during the Civil War.
Everyone has a story worth telling.
In 1865, Johanna, a burgeoning poet, befriends Louisa May Alcott. Their friendship and writings inspire two modern-day sisters, Taylor and Victoria, to find common ground again amid family turmoil.
My stories are always inspired from a nugget of real-life truth. This time, I found that truth with Louisa May Alcott’s “prince of patients.” Johanna and Louisa come to know one another through John Suhre, Johanna’s brother and Louisa’s “prince.”
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT’S “PRINCE OF PATIENTS”
In the fall of 1862 after her thirtieth birthday, Louisa departed Concord to serve in Washington as a nurse. There she met John Suhre, her “prince of patients,” a “most attractive” and “comely featured” blacksmith who was badly wounded at Fredericksburg. Louisa was greatly moved by John’s quiet dignity in the midst of his suffering and was determined to nobly share in it with him.
Louisa was given the task of telling John he did not have long to live. She helped prepare him for the time, writing letters home for him to his mother, sister (Johanna!), and brother, and staying by his side until the end when John “held my hand close, so close that when he was asleep at last, I could not draw it away.”
She later wrote that, “The army needed men like John, earnest, brave, and faithful; fighting for liberty and justice with both heart and hand, true soldiers of the Lord.”
The beautiful language and sweet affection Louisa used to write of John in Hospital Sketches inspired the historical storyline in The Orchard House.
Here’s the Stop #16 Basics:
If you’re interested, you can order The Orchard House on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christianbook, or at your local bookstore!
Clue to write down: fiction!
Link to Stop #17, the next stop on the loop: Angela Hunt’s site!
But wait! Before you go, I’m offering three books to three entrants–winner’s choice of Freedom’s Ring, The Hidden Side, or The Tea Chest. Use this Rafflecopter Form to ENTER! (Print books for US only. If an International winner is drawn, I will be happy to gift an e-book!)