My friend Ann Stewart, winner of the 2017 Christy Award for best debut in Christian Fiction, has a new book releasing TODAY! Out of the Water spans over 60 years and three continents. It tells the story of Irish immigrant Siobhan Kildea, who in 1919 flees heartbreak and disappointment in Boston to build a new life in a Montana prison town. After tragedy tears her new family apart, she must make the most difficult decision a mother can – and the consequences ripple for years afterward.
I’m excited to have her with me on the blog to answer a few questions about her new release. But first, my review.
What I liked
I enjoyed the multiple historical settings Ann creates in Out of the Water, as well as the themes of motherhood, adoption, and the ramifications of our choices that she explores in her new novel. Out of the Water covers early 20th century Boston, the front lines of World War I, and the stark beauty of the American western states. I felt like I was right on the front with Nurse Genevieve and working the farm with Siobhan in Montana.
Ann’s characters face incredibly difficult choices about things like abortion, adoption, and what is needed to make a family. Although I didn’t always agree with those choices, I did appreciate the different perspectives and ideas each character offers. I also enjoyed the literary references and the focus on books as a way to grow and unite us.
Interview with Ann!
Julia: Out of the Water explores the theme of adopted/ chosen families. What inspired you to write about this?
Ann: I have always been fascinated with adoptions whether in my own family or with my friends. I always want to know the backstory, and so I chose to write one. Why do some children choose to seek out their biological parents and why are some satisfied without that information? What do they learn when they find a biological parent? Is it better to know their background or not? In each novel I write, I want a lingering question. In STARS it was “If the worst happens and there’s no one to blame, do you blame God?” Out of the Water asks, “Is it always better to learn the truth?” With some of the characters, readers may determine it is not. And yet there is an underlying lie in this novel —that is hidden –which causes a family divide. That topic is ripe for discussion in book clubs. I also volunteered at Special Delivery, a group which helped women in crisis pregnancies. Some were keeping their babies and some relinquishing. Very tough choices.
Julia: I enjoyed all of the different places and different moments in history covered in Out of the Water. Your description of the front lines of WWI was particularly memorable. (Scars on palms of the stretcher bearers – such detail!) How did you tackle research for this novel?
Ann: When readers look at the Digging Deeper section in the novel, they’ll see many books used for research. Once I learned that my daughters’ Alma mater had sent nurses to the Great War front lines at St. Denis, and I have a daughter who is a UVA graduate and nurse at UVA hospital, I researched that base. I found it particularly fascinating because they, too, were in the middle of a pandemic, and it was killing more than the guns and gasses on the battlefield. There is a Stretcher Bearer’s Manual and book entitled WOUNDED and many poignant pictures of the men up to their waist in mud. The idea that they carry no weapons but strive to recover and revive injured men in the middle of no-man’s land was both horrifying and heroic.
The research was often connected to unconnected ideas in the novel. For example, one child is mute after witnessing an unrelated tragedy. When reading in my Voice magazine, I learned of a stretcher bearer who lost his voice after being unable to retrieve a wounded soldier. They “treated” him by asking him to make the sounds of those he had left behind. I couldn’t even begin to believe that the two topics could intertwine in a 2020 magazine on Singing. Some research is straight off the internet, some books, some magazines, some interviews. I have a box of resources at my feet right now — a box under my computer desk. It’s filled with everything from Priest Lake to Deer Lodge, to Boston to a notebook full of research. That’s one phase and I have to keep going back to it over and over and over.
The PLACES are the best part of the research. I went where I like to visit: Boston, Priest Lake, Seattle, and DEER LODGE. After a friend kept talking about this quirky town, I visited and KNEW it had to be in a novel. I can’t wait to SHARE that place with readers. SUCH a fascinating back history and so much left there to mine.
Julia: Besides the mention of the story of Moses being lifted out of the water, I didn’t get strong Christian messaging in this novel. What distinguishes a novel of Christian fiction from regular / general fiction.
Ann: That is perhaps the most challenging question. Am I an author who is a Christian or a Christian author? I prefer to think of myself as an author who is a Christian. I want to write books that are read-eemable. They must have some element of hope and redemption.
But as I wrote this book, the themes of redemption, hope and reconciliation were very subtle. It became a book about appreciating and considering life at all stages: the unborn child, the baby without the possibility of parents, the elderly woman, the depressed father. I knew the title OUT OF THE WATER early on: It is straight from the verse that Moses was drawn out of the water. His mother made the most difficult decision of her life: to give him up so that he might have life. There is the parallel that God gave up His only Son that we might have life, but there is nothing heavy-handed. It’s not even being published by a Christian publisher and perhaps that’s why a Christian publisher did not take it on.
Where to find Out of the Water
Purchase Out of the Water through one of the links below:
Amazon
Apple
Barnes & Noble
Bookshop.org
IndieBound
Kobo
Also available to retailers through IngramSpark.
If you read and enjoy Out of the Water, please be a good Word Nerd and leave a review on Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon and help Ann out!
Thanks for getting nerdy with me!
Thank you so much for the interview, ladies! I loved hearing about the background research for OUT OF THE WATER! It sounds like a wonderful and thought-provoking book!