About the Molly Chase Series

 Tell us about your book.

The Molly Chase series is an award-winning historical continuity series featuring romance, family drama, society drama, political suspense, espionage, and plenty of humor. The story is set in Boston during the tumultuous early days of the American republic, not long after the ratification of the Constitution. It could be described as Anne of Green Gables meets Gaskell’s North and South meets Kristin Lavransdatter meets The Witch of Blackbird Pond meets Hamilton: An American Musical—with all its contemporary jocularity, but minus Maria Reynolds in her lingerie. This is a clean read.

Where did you get the idea for the story?

I initially wrote a story set in 1770s England with Molly as the central character and an entirely different supporting cast. I spent two years working on that story, all the while knowing that something wasn’t quite right. Boston was at the back of my mind, but I wasn’t willing to admit it, lest I be forced to start over.

What happened?

Two things. First, I learned that the British navy impressed upwards of 10,000 American merchant sailors during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. That gave rise to a nascent idea of a sailor character, and with him the story’s setting shifted from the 1770s to the 1790s. Second, I decided to open the story on this side of the Atlantic. Once that happened, I was forced to let Josiah Robb into the story, and the rest is history.

You really lost two years of work?

Josiah was worth it. I adore that man. And we see and understand Molly so much better through his eyes.

Molly’s father, John Chase, commits suicide and she finds his body, and as a consequence she suffers from PTSD. How did you approach these themes?

Carefully! I researched the topics, of course, but I also was able to draw on the experience and expertise of friends, a psychiatrist, and a professional counselor. My editor also asked a number of pointed questions that helped me clarify John Chase’s backstory, which added complexity to the whole. Molly’s father had long been a “shadow character” for me, and without my editor’s help, his story would have been woefully underdeveloped.

Several historical persons appear in the novel: George Washington and his cabinet, Citizen Genêt, and Thomas Melvill, a minor player in the American Revolution. How did they come to be a part of your story?

We forget how small the United States once was! The 1790 census put the population of Boston at roughly 18,000. In a town that size, you may not know everyone, but you come across the same people, time and again.

Major Thomas Melvill is a key character in my story and the most likely real-life person Josiah would have known. The major was a beloved figure in Boston. He was a friend of Sam Adams and was one of those rowdies at the Boston Tea Party. After the war, as surveyor of Custom House, Melvill would have been acquainted with nearly everyone on the wharves. Josiah would have been no exception.

Josiah also meets the infamous Citizen Genêt, revolutionary France’s ambassador to the United States who tried to override President Washington’s Declaration of Neutrality and draw the country into the French revolutionary wars. Genêt’s ship veered off-course on its way here and landed in Charleston in April 1793, around the same time the news that England had entered the war was reaching our shores. As soon as he landed, Genêt began recruiting American privateers to fight alongside the French navy. In In Pieces, he encounters Josiah while Josiah’s ship is in Charleston and, thinking that he’s the captain, tries to recruit him—one of my favorite scenes to write.

The series features a Protestant-to-Catholic conversion subplot. How did you handle that?

I was initially miffed by Josiah’s interest in Catholicism—not because I’m embarrassed by my faith, but because I didn’t want the story to veer toward didacticism. People often complain that religious fiction is “preachy,” and here I had a character who wanted to convert. Curses!

Now I know that from a storytelling perspective, Josiah’s conversion needed to happen for Molly’s sake. In order for Molly to make peace with her dead father, she needs a broader eschatology than her Anglican upbringing would have allowed—specifically, she needs the concept of purgatory. Such was the inevitable conclusion of my Catholic imagination. And if inevitable, I figured I had better do it well, depicting both sides fairly while also steering clear of merely irritating polemics.

So I made the primary conflict personal and familial rather than theological. I also utilized Catechism §817-822, which, while grieving the fracture in the Body of Christ, acknowledges that Catholics and Protestants alike share in God’s grace by means of our common baptism. In fact, Josiah’s interest in Catholicism is the direct result of his Protestant father purportedly being in heaven. Think about that!

Can one write a “Catholic novel” about Protestants?

I certainly hope so! Catholic-Protestant differences came to the fore in writing this book, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t struggle to reconcile the two. When writing about faith, most Catholic novelists prefer to employ “signs and symbols,” while many (not all) Protestant writers lean toward direct discourse. Hence the charge of “preachiness” from those who are unaccustomed to it.

Yet I have to engage the dialectical at some level if I’m going to depict my eighteenth-century Congregationalist characters well. Josiah’s interest in Catholicism is owing to a mystical experience that his own tradition cannot explain—the premise is Catholic—yet mysticism is not reason enough for him to convert. He wants to read and talk and argue and meet issues head on. Same with his mother. This is their religious mode, deeply ingrained in them—and even myself. (I’m a convert.) I like to think of some Protestants’ preference for the dialectical as one of many cultural differences that came as a result of the Reformation.

On the flip side, I can see Protestants thinking that Catholics are sometimes too understated. That’s a fair critique.

This story is first and foremost a romance. Did John Paul II’s Theology of the Body have an influence on your writing?

Absolutely. I would say Molly Chase is my exploration into the Theology of the Body, especially as the story extends into marriage itself, rather than ending at the proposal. The book follows Molly and Josiah along the path of sanctification through the joys and trials of marriage. They grapple with the meaning of suffering and taste the sweetness of the Cross.

In fact, the story contains not one love story, but two: one human, one divine. Not only does Josiah court Molly, but so does God. God’s love and Josiah’s love are of a piece, through which Molly finds healing, then sanctification, and finally—if this mortal, imperfect writer can pull it off—theosis. The Molly Chase series is a story about love, and a story oriented toward Love.