Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Danielle! Please tell us about yourself and your new book, ALL WE LEFT BEHIND.  Thank you for the invitation to be here! A little about me is that I am a child and family counsellor in private practice and I split time between Vancouver and Mayne Island Canada. I write historical fiction as Danielle R. Graham and contemporary fiction as D.R. Graham. All We Left Behind debuted on the Toronto Star and Globe & Mail Bestsellers lists in Canada and released in the US on March 30th! All We Left Behind is an emotional untold story of World War II, set against the backdrop of the internment of Japanese Canadians from Mayne Island, BC. Mark Sakamoto, author of Forgiveness, and winner of CBC Canada Reads, calls All We Left Behind, “As heartwarming as it is heartbreaking.” Glynis Peters, international bestselling author of The Secret Orphan, calls it, “Heart-wrenching. Emotional. A powerful story of wartime love and devotion.”   I haven’t read many books set during WWII in Canada. What made you set your novel in British Columbia?  I grew up in Steveston BC, which is a predominately Japanese-Canadian fishing village and I have a family cottage…

Last month we looked at lives impacted by World War I.  This month we’ll continue reading about the extraordinary feats and stoic acts of heroism men and women find themselves capable of when tested by the cataclysm that was World War II—a fitting topic as our world continues to battle an invisible modern-day enemy. Not all the heroics happen in desperate clashes between uniformed soldiers.  Jennifer Ryan’s THE CHILBURY LADIES’ CHOIR shows us the increasing strain of worry and scarcity in a small village on the English home front.  When the men of Chilbury go off to war, the vicar suggests that the church choir, stripped of its male voices, suspend operation.  Instead, several forthright ladies decide they will “carry on singing” as the Chilbury Ladies’ Choir.  Presented through letters and diary entries, the author follows the lives and struggles of the choir’s members, including an agonized widow whose only son goes off to war; a flirtatious teenager drawn to a mysterious artist, a refugee hiding secrets, and the choir director who inspires them.  Intrigue, heartbreak, and courage carry the ladies of this small town through these dangerous and desperate days. From England, we switch to Norway in UNDER DARKENING…