Cycling through Time: Why It’s Important to Study the Past and Q&A with the author

By Melanie Dobson

An imposing statue stands outside the National Archives in Washington, DC. On the limestone throne of this monument is a sculpted man with a scroll in one hand and a massive book in the other. Etched below his studious pose is this inscription:

Study the Past

But why is it important for us to study the past?

Writers and historians dig through ancient scrolls and books for countless reasons, but as I searched for the answer to this question, I discovered three reasons why we should all be students of history. Why we should all read the stories of those who’ve gone before us.

Identifying Trends

Racism, the suppression of free speech, rioting, a pandemic—four of the primary issues our country is facing right now are the same threats that the historical and contemporary characters confront in my new time-slip novel The Curator’s Daughter. While I wrote this work of fiction in 2019, I had no crystal ball to see into the future. The stage, sadly, was already set for a crisis.

Identifying trends is one of the main reasons why we should all study history. The Curator’s Daughter is mainly a story about the Holocaust, but it circles back almost seven hundred years to the Black Death, which ignited a violent anti-Semitic blaze across Europe. The Jews, their enemies said, caused the plague by poisoning wells. As a result, more than two hundred Jewish communities were destroyed.

Hundreds of years after Jews were murdered because of the plague, another blaze of hateful rhetoric and lies hit Europe. Adolf Hitler convinced millions of Germans that the Jewish people instigated their humiliating loss of the Great War. His hateful words soon turned into action, and a different kind of plague killed more than six million Jews and countless others from around the world.

At times, this hatred feels like a never-ending cycle as the spokes of another year, decade, century circle around. And free speech, one of our nation’s most valuable commodities, is being threatened as well.

Instead of studying the past today, identifying trends through the years, our society often edits history. In the name of respect, we try to erase the most shameful events. Cover up the embarrassing pieces of our history when we should be shining light on the most horrific of times, sifting through these events to find out what went wrong.

Chronological snobbery is what C. S. Lewis called a civilization that believes it is above repeating the catastrophic events of the past. But instead of believing ourselves to be better than those who came before us, we should humbly admit that we are susceptible to a repeat. As a society, we must identify what went wrong in the past to stop the cycle today. A hard brake before we crash again.

Defeat Evil 

We must study the past so we don’t repeat the genocide from hatred, the animosity that destroys people and communities alike. Then we utilize this information so these same evils don’t cycle again on our watch.

Each individual has a different role in stopping the destruction, a different weapon to wield in fighting evil. When we see the attack coming from afar, how do we gird up for a battle? What weapon do we have to fight?

For our first responders and military, it might be a literal weapon, but for most of us, we fight with our words. Some of us battle by stepping into the political arena or writing down our stories or teaching our children lessons from the past so they can fight evil alongside us. Others stop the onslaught of evil with love and forgiveness as they care for those who have been wounded in the midst.

Tosha Lamdin Williams, the founder of Family Disciple Me, recently wrote an article called “The Tale of Two Harriets” (linked) about two heroic women in history—Harriet Tubman and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Both women balked at the cultural norm of slavery in the mid-1800s and fought in their own way to free slaves. Harriet Beecher Stowe battled the evil of slavery with written words while Harriet Tubman escorted slaves to freedom. Instead of running away, hiding from evil, these Harriets fought with the weapons of grace and truth.

We read history so we can learn the stories like these and the strategies of how others defeated the evil around them. Then we get to work right where we live, searching for ways to redeem the ruins in our world.

Finding Hope 

Finally, we study the past in hopes of replicating good choices and replacing bad decisions with better ones. We study it to find hope after a cycle of hatred, peace after a pandemic, reconciliation after a family rift. In the pages of history, we find victory that we can cling to as we seek restoration.

We are inspired by the stories throughout history of ordinary people like the two Harriets who did extraordinary things to care for their neighbor. By those men and women courageous enough, even when they were afraid, to stand for what was right.

On the other side of the National Archives door is a second statue, this one of a robed woman engrossed in another book. The words under her sandaled feet read:

What is Past is Prologue

Both statues in front of the National Archives doors were carved in the 1930s—a prologue for us living in 2021—but the reminders on these towering monuments are just as relevant today as we write a new prologue.

Our society is at a crossroads again. Will we wield our words with grace and truth today, or will we be defeated by the evil around us? As we circle again this labyrinth of time, it’s critical that we step mentally into the past and study it. Search for ways to defeat evil and find doors of hope for the next generation.

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Stay tune for a special Q&A with Melanie, plus a chance for you to win a copy of Melanie's latest release, The Curator's Daughter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melanie Dobson is the award-winning author of more than twenty historical romance, suspense, and time-slip novels, including The Curator’s Daughter, which releases from Tyndale House Publishers in March 2021. Melanie is the former corporate publicity manager at Focus on the Family and owner of the publicity firm Dobson Media Group. When she isn't writing, Melanie enjoys teaching both writing and public relations classes. Melanie and her husband, Jon, have two daughters and live near Portland, Oregon.

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW with Melanie & Annie

1. Hi Melanie! Welcome back to Seekerville! Thank you for your stopping by. Can you tell us a bit about you, especially for those readers that haven’t met you yet? 

Thanks so much for having me! I’m excited to join you again. I am the mom of two teenage girls (both of them were babies when I started writing fiction!). I love learning the stories in history and am on a quest to follow the teachings of Jesus in my daily life. After seven solid years of writing, rejections, and rewriting, my first novel was published in 2006, and I have now published almost thirty time-slip, historical romance, suspense, and resource books. Just typing thirty is surreal …

2. You've shared about writing time-slip novels the last time you were here. What is it about the WWII era that interests you to continue writing books set during that time?

I like telling the stories from World War II because so many seemingly ordinary people stepped up with courage during that time, even when they were scared, to stand against evil. And what they accomplished was extraordinary. Because many of these heroes were killed, my desire is to keep their legacy alive. Keep telling the stories so we can all remember together and stop the cycle of hatred from repeating itself. 

3. Can you tell us a bit about your latest release, The Curator's Daughter?

Absolutely. This is a story about an archaeologist named Hanna Tillich who cherishes her work for the Third Reich, searching for the Holy Grail and other artifacts to bolster evidence of a master Aryan race. But when she is reassigned to work as a museum curator in Nuremberg, then forced to marry an SS officer and adopt a young girl, Hanna begins to see behind the Nazi facade. Eighty years later, a researcher named Ember Ellis becomes intrigued by Hanna’s story. What she uncovers will force her to confront the heartache of her own past and ultimately the man who wants to silence her forever.

I wrote this book in 2019, but it is also about racism in the name of righteousness, the suppression of free speech, rioting, and a pandemic. Don’t know exactly how that happened except the stage was set for a crisis in our nation long before 2020.  

4. In your latest, The Curator's Daughter, what do you think will surprise readers when it comes to picking it up, particularly if they've read your previous novels? 

I know the stories from that era are endless, but after researching and writing five novels based on events from World War II, I was surprised to learn about the devoted research division of the Nazi Party (Ahnenerbe) that was developed to prove the Aryan heritage of the German people and then some of the frightening details about SS-program called Lebensborn that justified kidnapping thousands of Jewish children from Eastern Europe. Readers might also be surprised at the direction of the present-day plot in this story. I won’t give anything away, but the tone is a bit different than my other novels. 

5. Archaeology plays a key role in The Curator's Daughter. How has research of this profession help or drive any aspect of the storyline?

Becoming an archaeologist was my dream when I was a girl. I loved learning the stories of history and being outside and all the romance of discovering remnants buried for hundreds or thousands of years. As part of my research for this novel, I took an archaeology class and what I learned in those weeks helped drive Hanna’s personality and her passion for this work along with all the logistics of this profession. It also helped me realize that I am much more passionate about crafting stories about the past than digging for artifacts.

My research for this book also took me to Washington, DC, Martha’s Vineyard, and eventually to Nuremberg. If readers would like to read more about my research journey to write The Curator’s Daughter, they can find that info here. (link: https://melaniedobson.com/research/research-trips/curators-daughter-trip/ )

6. Which part of the book is your favorite? Can you share a line/paragraph (without a spoiler)?

I enjoyed writing all the sections with Lilly, the girl taken from her home in Poland. Her story just poured out of me, and I realized later that her journey really represented what many people in Germany experienced at the time—shock, fear, confusion, resignation, and for some, like Lilly, a determination to live much differently that what was intended for her under National Socialism. 

Much later in life, Lilly says, “All King David needed was the stone that God gave him to kill Goliath, and I need to use whatever gifts that God gives me to defeat the giants in my world.” 

7. Let’s chat a bit more about you. Besides reading and writing, what other hobbies do you like?

Wait…there are other hobbies beside reading and writing? ☺ I’m not sure that these would be considered hobbies, but I love to travel and hike and play board games with my family. On most days, I really do enjoy tucking myself away in my favorite coffee shop with a green tea or lavender latte and dream up my next book. 

8. If you had to choose 1 book you've read in the past year that is an absolute must read, what would it be?

Set the Stars Alight by Amanda Dykes. This is a magical, lyrical, time-slip novel, and I will butcher the description if I attempt to describe the plot. Set the Stars Alight is an experience as well as a story. I rarely lose myself to a book these days, but I was immersed in every page of this one. 

9. Which one of your books would you suggest to first time readers of your books to get to "know you" as a writer?

Oh, that’s a beautiful question. Thank you. Catching the Wind is a reader favorite, especially the audiobook which ended up winning the Audie Award for Faith-Based Fiction in 2018 because of the incredible narration by Nancy Peterson. To really get to know me as a writer, though, it would have to be Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor. That was the story of my heart.

10. And to end, what’s next for you and what other can your fans expect?

I just finished my next time-slip novel, and I am so excited to share it with my readers! Sadly, that won’t happen for another year, but this story is about an American Quaker woman named Grace who rescues children from a French internment camp during World War II. Two of the children, a brother and sister, join Grace in Oregon, and they struggle over the decades to restore the brokenness in their story.

Thanks so much for having me back! My life was changed from  researching and writing The Curator’s Daughter, and I hope the lives of readers are changed a bit as well when they finish this story.  

Many thanks to Melanie for stopping by Seekerville today and for your time in answering my questions! We're always thrilled to have you here. 

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GIVEAWAY

Tyndale Publishers is giving away a copy of The Curator's Daughter to one reader today. Just leave a comment below for Melanie and you're entered.

(Seekerville's Giveaway rules applied. Open to US residents with a US mailing address only.)