Sandra Warren’s historical fiction Obsessed by a Promise
Sandra Warren is a writer with very eclectic writing tastes. She’s been fortunate to have work published in multiple formats including books, magazines, journals, newspapers, audio (cassette, CD) and video (VHS, DVD) on topics spanning children’s, gifted education, parenting, how to, poetry, educational activity guides and biography for adults as well as children. Her interests remain eclectic with two screenplays, a novel and several picture book manuscripts in process. Originally from Michigan and Ohio, she’s proud to call herself a “Mountain Woman,” having recently moved to NC where glorious vistas inspire latest renderings.
You’ve written quite a bit about American history, from the Orphan Trains to WWII to the Persian Gulf War. What sort of American stories call to you and inspire you to tell them?
It’s hard to say what sort of American stories call to me. All of the historical stories I’ve written came to me via others; two came from one telephone call (the Persian Gulf stories) one came from my connection to a high school classmate and my own personal experience with the school (the WWII stories) and one came from being a sales representative for an educational company which introduced me to a nonfiction book that tweaked my curiosity (the Orphan Train connection).
I started out to be a writer of children’s books. In fact, I never aspired to write all the others, but circumstances changed when I received a telephone call from an Army Reserve nurse who wanted me to tell her story about serving in the Persian Gulf War. At the time, I told her I’d never done anything like that before and didn’t know if a) I could write it and b) if I could ever get it published. She told me, “You have to do it because God told me to call you!” How could I turn that down? So, I began to write, When Duty Called: Even Grandma Had To Go! Shortly after starting the interview process for that book, the nurse told me another nurse under her command had a story that needed to be told and asked if she could have the other nurse call me. When I heard the other story, I knew it was a story movies were made of and I wanted to tell that story. Consequently, in the middle of writing one Persian Gulf memoir, I began interviews for the second, Hidden Casualties: Battles On The Home Front! They both ended up coming out at the same time.
When I was in junior high, I’d heard a story about how students from that school had raised over $375,000 selling US War Bonds and Stamps and bought a B-17 bomber during WWII, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. In high school I worked in the school bookstore while overhead a mural depicting the event hung, unnoticed. Seventy years later that story would come to roost when I received a call from a former classmate who asked me how close I lived to Meadows of Dan, Virginia? It seems, he had found a crash report that the South High bomber, which had been missing all those years, had crashed in that small town. My classmate knew I was a writer and asked me to investigate since I lived less than three hours from that site. We Bought A WWII Bomber: The Untold Story Of A Michigan High School, a B-17 Bomber & The Blue Ridge Parkway, was a story I was called to write. After that was completed, and even though it was about what school children had done to help the war effort, I felt it would be fun to write a middle grade historical fiction version, She Started It All, a story that just might turn younger students on to history. The bomber book resulted in the placement of two wayside historical markers; one at Mabry’s Mill, Meadows of Dan, VA on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Milepost 176.2 and the other at South High School/Gerald R. Ford Job Corps Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
You might say I became obsessed with the story that became Obsessed By A Promise, after reading a small booklet about the Orphan Train movement, one of the best kept secrets of how the American west was settled. I will address this more specifically below.
I don’t know if I’ll write more historical fiction. It all depends on the people I meet, requests that come in or a story that I hear that resonates with me. I find I enjoy the interview process as well as the research process that goes into writing someone’s story.
I will say that one story I wish I had started earlier was of Jane Baessler Doyle, a WWII WASP (Women’s Airforce Service Pilot) who also attended the high school where the bomber story came from. She recently passed at 97, vital and alert up until the end. I missed the opportunity to interview her and ask her about doing a book, even though we talked multiple times when I was visiting Grand Rapids.
You’ve written for both children and adults. Is your thought process or writing style different for a children’s book than for a title for adults?
The short answer to your question is “yes,” the thought process and writing style is very different. Every genre you write in has different formats, word counts, story arcs, numbers of chapters, even word choices, etc. Writing for adults, however, has fewer rules than writing for children, even though non-writers have the idea that writing for children is easy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Writing children’s books is extremely difficult. Within the genre of children’s writing there are very different formats and requirements; writing a fiction picture book is very different from writing a nonfiction picture book and writing a middle-grade novel is different from writing a young adult novel, whether fiction or nonfiction. A successful writer pays attention to the details of the genre in which they are writing.
You’ve got some unusual titles, starting with ‘If I Were a Road.’ Where do you come up with your titles?
I’ve been fortunate to have my titles for eight of nine books with one publisher, accepted. Titles are normally not the author’s prerogative. Although input is accepted, publishers want titles that they feel will draw the most attention, which may not be the title the author gave it.
Some titles come easier to come by than others. For me, most are a natural outgrowth of the stories themselves although for some, I have to consult my critique group for suggestions.
Having said that, If I Were A Road and If I Were A Table were a natural outgrowth of the story/stories within. Both books were designed to enhance creativity asking, “If I Were?” questions throughout. The Great Bridge Lowering is another book enhancing creativity about a town divided by an earthquake and a bridge that is built to bring the town back together, falls apart while being lowered into place. The title for this book came from a banner that the illustrator had in his illustration. It seemed the perfect title. When Duty Called: Even Grandma Had To Go fit the Persian Gulf Story because the nurse involved joined the military at 47-years of age when she was a wife, mother and grandmother. When we talk of war, we talk of casualties among other things. When trying to come up with a title for the second Persian Gulf book, the war tragedy didn’t happen on the front, it happened back at home while the young mother served. Thus the title, Hidden Casualties: Battles On The Home Front.
Two story titles that took some work were We Bought A WWII Bomber: The Untold Story Of A Michigan High School, a B-17 Bomber & The Blue Ridge Parkway, and Obsessed By A Promise.
The bomber subtitle is way too long but I wanted all those points covered. Obsessed By A Promise started out as My Brother’s Keeper and then They Called Me Blue. I liked the first title but a movie had come out called My Sister’s Keeper and that sounded too similar so I changed it to They Called Me Blue. But the Blue title didn’t give any indication what the story was about. I came up with Obsessed By A Promise with my critique group because I kept telling them that JT, the main character, was obsessed with finding his brother because he had promised his father he’d keep his little brother safe and he failed. Hence the title, Obsessed By A Promise.
I see your latest book, Obsessed by a Promise, is about brothers separated when one travels on the orphan train. Could you talk more about that? What were the orphan trains, what happened to the children who traveled on them?
In 1856, in what became the Children’s Aid Society, a young preacher, upset with the numbers of homeless children living on the streets of New York City, devised a plan to gather these children into orphanages and send them out west on trains to families struggling to settle the vast lands. Children from toddlers to twelve years of age, all causation, were taken and given, to anyone who promised to clothe, feed, house, educate in school and church and keep girls until the age of eighteen and boys until they were seventeen. They did not have to adopt them. The Orphan Trains ran for 75-years displacing over 200,000 children, many of whom were never thought to be orphans. The trains were so successful that other big cities, Boston and Chicago also sent trains. The last train left New York City in May of 1929.
After reading the first book about the Orphan Trains, something I’d never heard of before, I read several more and couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Over the years I conjured up the story of two brothers, whose father dies in prison leaving them to fend for themselves. The older brother, who promised his father he’d take care of his little bro, can’t shake the promise and basically puts his whole life on hold, for the next fifty years, to find him.
For the most part, the program worked well. Flyers were sent to cities along railroad lines encouraging perspective families to be at a certain location at a certain time to come and get a child. The children were lined up on a stage and the perspective families were allowed to come up and check them out, reminiscent of how slave auctions were handled although not as savage. Still, the children reported hating to be pinched and prodded and inspected.
Children were initially sent to Michigan and the Ohio valley, but throughout the 75-years were placed out to 47 states. Many were taken in by fine families, treated well and thrived growing up to be well-rounded and respectful adults; many teachers, doctors, lawyers, a couple of senators and representatives. But some were abused and suffered greatly in their new homes and families.
The children were not all orphans. Many families placed their children in the orphanages temporarily while they got back on their feet and were able to care for them. But the matron and orphanage workers paid no attention to that when selecting children for transport. Many families never saw their children again.
Recently, I saw an article declaring the death of the last of the Orphan Train children. I don’t know that to be true. Children were sent far and wide so there may still be some 90+ someone somewhere still alive. There is an Orphan Train organization that has a reunion once a year out west somewhere, Kansas I believe, where descendants gather to celebrate the lives of their ancestors.
As a historical fiction author, what kind of stories do you think future historical fiction books will tell about the era of the coronavirus?
I hope they will tell about the bravery of the American people who stepped forward to help out even putting their own lives on the line, to try to save people; about how people survived despite the mixed messages being sent from the highest level of our government; how inventive people had to be while quarantined in their own homes; how families came together, forced to engage in conversation and play together when they ordinarily were too busy; how children had to learn to get along with their siblings because there was no one else to play with; how even children stepped forward with creative ideas to help; and how technology change the way of life in American jobs and families. They will, of course, have to tell of the deaths of so many with personal stories of losing family members and friends. In other words, I hope they will give a balanced view of living through this pandemic.
I’d love to share why I started writing!
If you read through my website and the ABOUT section then you already know this about me but I thought I would put it here just in case you haven’t seen it.
I never aspired to be a writer. Writing was my least and worst subject in school, second only to math. No teacher, except one, ever told me I had great ideas. They just attacked my papers with a red pen pointing out the errors. It wasn’t until I was put into an Honors English class . . . as a mistake I always said . . . that I first learned that I had good ideas. Had it not been for that class, I never would have had the confidence to write for anyone. Even so, I did what I had to do to get out of college.
It wasn’t until I was married and put my oldest daughter in school that I became interested in developing classroom material for teachers who knew nothing about teaching gifted children. You see my oldest was highly gifted and tuning out and turning off in regular classroom. I had to do something so I studied what methods worked best with gifted students and what kinds of materials were needed in classrooms. A neighbor, who taught gifted children, had just completed a classroom assignment with her students where they had to respond to this question: If you were a road, what kind would you be? My neighbor shared the amazing stories her 4th graders had written. I said at the time, “Hey, that would make a great book for teachers.” My neighbor agreed and told me to get busy. Hence, the story If I Were A Road, was born. The book follows 4 roads in storybook form and ends with the question, If you were a road, what kind would you be? The publishing company that picked it up, Good Apple, Inc., which is no longer in business, had me add 32 pages of classroom activities. That book along with If I Were a Table and The Great Bridge Lowering, are still used in elementary and middle grade classrooms throughout the country after thirty-five years! If I Were A Table was recently brought out with an updated cover and illustrations. These books are currently published and sold by Royal Fireworks Publishing.
Sandra Warren’s Obsessed by a Promise can be ordered here.
I thought I would share the different venues where I’ve given presentations on the bomber book which came out in 2015.
Here are some of the businesses and organizations where I’ve shared the bomber story:
Schools
Colleges (Calvin College, MI, College of William & Mary, VA, Roger Williams University, RI)
Virginia Historical Aeronautical Aviation Museum/Association
Yankee Aviation Museum (MI)
Churches
Senior Citizen Communities and complexes (MI, FL, AK, NC, VA, OH)
Rotary (NC, MI)
Kiwanis (OH)
Newcomer’s Club (NC & OH)
Ruritan Club (NC)
Historical Societies
Libraries
Festivals/Craft/Artisan Market
Donut Den (yes, a donut shop…an amazing place)
