Congrats to the winners of last week’s Harvest of Rubies giveaway:

Jan McFall Powell

Whitney Schork

Carol Gehringer

Jennifer Cherney

Jazmin K

Luba Makonechnaya

Donna Pierce

Denice Mumford

Jenny Lewis

Lisa Larson

We’ll be contacting you today about getting your free copy to you as soon as possible, so please check your email!

Continuing with our May giveaways, this week we’re givng away TEN sets of the first THREE books in the Freedom Seekers series by Lois Walfrid Johnson! That’s a lot of books! These stories will be great for the younger readers in your life.

To enter the contest, simply leave a comment below with a response to this question:

What was your favorite book or series as a child/teenager? (You may mention more than one if you wish.)

You can sign in to leave a comment using existing Diqus, Facebook, Twitter, or Google accounts. Or, you can easily register with Disqus (our commenting platform) by providing your name and email. Your email won’t be visible to anyone but us.

To learn more about the Freedom Seekers series, check out the following:

Our Author Q&A with Lois Walfrid Johnson

Freedom Seekers on Lois Walfrid Johnson’s website

Happy Reading!

Now Lois is reintroducing her Freedom Seeker’s series from River North, specifically updated with the homeschool family in mind to include materials and questions for study. The reader will go on a journey of courage with four kids facing the dangers of aiding escaped slaves as part of the Underground Railroad.

Here Lois she discusses her writing life, the making of the Freedom Seekers, and why homeschoolers will want to read about the lives of Libby, Caleb, Jordan, and Peter.

How did your writing career begin? 

From my earliest memory my mother read to us at bedtime, using an excellent book of Bible stories for children. My dad read from the Bible at mealtimes. Now, looking back, I realize that those early understandings also gave me a sense of story.

When I was nine-years old, Mother asked me to clean the leaves from the barberry bushes in front of our house, to correct me for something I had done. The thorns made it a miserable job. As I sat down on a sidewalk a church bell began to ring for a funeral. When the bell stopped, I thought, What a long time for someone to live. I wonder what that person left behind. If I could possibly write a book, that’s what I’d like to leave behind.

After supper that evening I went upstairs and started writing my first book. Years later that manuscript became The Runaway Clown, the eighth novel in the Adventures of the Northwoods Series. With a bit of rewriting, of course!

Why do you like writing for young people?

Because kids are real. They tell me what they like, what they think, what’s fun, what hurts them. I want to speak to all those things.

How did you become known as the “trusted friend of families?”

I had written for four age levels with my work. Then one day a young man told me, “Lois, my wife and I are new Christians. We really want to have a Christian family, but both of us grew up in such  dysfunctional homes that we don’t have the faintest clue how.”

I couldn’t forget his words.  I decided that the best way to help might be through fiction. If I wrote in a realistic way, readers could also learn how to forgive, resolve their conflicts, discover how to work together, and become a family.

Using some truth and a great amount of fiction, I asked myself what if questions. What if a widowed mom in Minneapolis married a widowed dad with three children living in northwest Wisconsin? The first novel became The Disappearing Stranger in the Adventures of the Northwoods series. In every novel I’ve written since, being a family becomes a natural part of the plot. 

Your books are so well researched. Tell us about your researching methods. 

I start learning everything I can about a topic, a possible setting and a time period. That means reading extensively, interviewing people, thinking about who my main characters should be, their backgrounds, and what is needed to make a story come together.

How do you choose the time periods that you have written about? 

I pray. I ask, “Lord, what do you want me to do next?  What do you want me to know?” I pay attention to the answers he gives me in my daily Bible reading. What verses does the Holy Spirit make real, as if they’re under a holy spotlight? What words seem to jump off the page? I pray about the interests the Lord develops in me and the way he opens or shuts doors.

Tell us about the Freedom Seekers series.

While still writing Northwoods novels I said to my husband, “I like doing this so much that I want to keep writing novels. Will you think about what we can do next?”

The next morning Roy went out for breakfast. Yes, he’s a Norwegian, and they always think best when drinking coffee. Soon he took out a napkin and wrote down his idea. That evening he told me, “We could have a family that lives on a steamboat. If the father is the captain, the family could travel up and down the Mississippi as needed for the story.” I answered, “That’s it!”

Living in a 22-foot fifth wheeler, we researched towns between St. Paul and St. Louis. We discovered that the Underground Railroad crossed the Mississippi into the Promised Land of freedom. Praying for our stops and starts, we kept researching, reading, laying historical groundwork, and creating characters.

The first edition of the series was called The Riverboat Adventures. When I returned to the novels to republish and write study questions I decided to change the series name to Freedom Seekers. The concepts were already in the story, but the new series title helped me ask questions about runaway slave laws that conflicted with what our founding fathers knew from the Bible and brought to their writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Tell us specifically about Libby, Caleb, Jordan, and Peter, who joins the Freedom Seekers in the fourth novel. How can today’s kids relate to these characters?

When her mother died, Libby’s father felt she was too young to live on the steamboat Christina. Her four years with Aunt Vi influenced Libby’s thinking in ways that Captain Norstad did not appreciate. Hearing her aunt say, “I want to give up on that girl,” Libby appeals to Pa: “I want a never-give-up family, a family that believes in me, even when I’m not perfect. A family that sticks together, even though it’s hard.” In Libby we see hope for all of us to become a caring person who helps others.

Cabin boy, Caleb is an Underground Railroad conductor since the age of nine. He leads fugitive slaves to freedom because he cares about them. When questioned by cruel slave catchers, Caleb hides his feelings but always manages to tell the truth. Yet there’s one kind of situation where Caleb loses his cool, so he isn’t perfect.

Named because his parents believed he would lead his people across the Mississippi River to the Promised Land of freedom, Jordan had an early call on his life. A strong Christian, he hears the Lord’s leading. But there’s one problem. Jordan is so brave, even in the face of danger, that he can become foolhardy.

Peter has been an orphan since the age of seven. He is now 10 and deaf because of a fever that damaged his hearing. When Pa Norstad wants him to grow up living in sunlight, Peter joins the Christina family. Wise beyond his years, he knows how to protect himself, and also teaches sign language to the others.

When I developed my story families there was something I didn’t realize I was doing.  A former high school principal summed it up:  “Lois, readers like your books because your characters are kids and teens doing grown-up things.”

What do you want readers to take away from this series?  

I want readers to understand that freedom isn’t doing whatever they want. Instead, true freedom comes when we know the Lord, recognize his leading for our lives, and follow that leading in both the good and the difficult times all of us face.

I also want readers to value the Christian principles given to us by our founding fathers,  first in the Declaration of Independence, and then in the Constitution of the United States, its Bill of Rights, and other amendments.   Each of us needs to ask a question:  When a bad law made by man conflicts with God’s higher law, how should we as Christians respond?

Is there anything else you would like to say to the readers of the Freedom Seekers series?

May every one of my readers be a true Freedom Seeker.  Keep walking in the steps of Jesus, your Lord, all the days of your life.  Enjoy the journey!

Find out more about the Freedom Seekers series at www.lwjbooks.com. Books 1-3 are now available. Watch for the rest of the series to be released throughout 2013!