Colleen got the inspiration for Out of Splinters and Ashes by being intrigued by moral dilemmas. “A person finding their feet on one path while their heart is on another,” Colleen said. “This particular conflict of man, an engaged American runner, falling in love with a German woman during Berlin’s 1936 Olympics, was purely the result of my imagination contriving the dilemma of impossible circumstances compounded by obligations, separating two persons’ lives but not their hearts.”
Creating the title wasn’t easy Colleen said. “It began as “The Mirror” but a quick search on Amazon proved that wasn’t a good choice. My publisher and I batted ideas around for several days, finally coming to “Out of Splinters and Ashes” since those were the physical ruins each accused lover was left with, but which also became the soil for love to blossom in again.”
The main theme of Out of Splinters and Ashes is how someone can love an enemy. “That is the question which vexes Dietrich, the grandson of the German woman, and Cate, the granddaughter of the American man, as each in their respective country comes upon evidence that the vague presence which has surrounded their grandparent is the absence of a past love,” Colleen explained. “A wrong love that brings an old war to the US when Dietrich flies to New York to find the offending American man from two generations ago, and encounters Cate—a worthy foe who fights Dietrich, wrangles to win the battle, but does it with the same heart Dietrich has. Out of Splinters and Ashes tells the story of two sets of enemies, two generations apart, all bound by the same heart.”
The original incident of Out of Splinters and Ashes takes place during Berlin’s 1936 Summer Olympics, but the unraveling of what happened there occurs in New York City in the 1980s. The setting is a small suburban New York City bookstore, quaint and comfortable, its shelves stocked with old authors and stories that unravel and vindicate wronged hearts. Though most of the action occurs in the 1980’s, the characters who were “victimized” by what supposedly happened in the 1930’s, remain stuck in that simpler time period, their homes, their styles, and their lives more a picture of that era than the current. “This suburb has all of the elements of a small town culture, while near a city offering more,” Colleen said. “The characters comment to that—the easy access to diverse nationalities, more resources, and vast shopping options are not far away, but far enough their lives remain isolated and comfortable.”
In Out of Splinters and Ashes you’ll meet Dietrich who is from Germany and a touted journalist, well respected by and respectful of his homeland and heritage. “He is a man of facts and details, relying on them instead of sensationalism in his life and career, until he is faced with the possibility that an illicit relationship with an international enemy may lie in his background,” Colleen said. “Armed with only fictional stories and rumor to prove or disprove the allegation his grandmother had given birth to a daughter fathered by a US runner in Berlin’s 1936 Olympics, he flies to New York to find the man, uncover the real truth, and put the accusation to rest. Upon his arrival he finds evidence his background may indeed be tainted, and he also finds an enemy of his own—Cate, the granddaughter of the US runner, a woman who blurs Dietrich’s lines between fact and fiction, hatred and love.
You will also meet Cate who has grown up in a quiet suburb of New York City with an unquiet family. “Dysfunctional from the beginning,” Colleen explained, “Cate’s grandmother has immersed the family in the vehemence of her claim that the man she was forced to marry wasn’t the same man she’d been engaged to before he was sent overseas before the Second World War. Cate’s family is splintered by the rift, sending her parents far away from the unresolved anger, her grandmother to the back of her bookstore to live, her grandfather into quiet solitude whittling sticks to splinters, and Cate herself into running—miles and miles of unexplained running her grandfather wishes she would stop. When Dietrich appears, prying, asking questions, and pointing to invisible angsts Cate doesn’t want to face, she runs harder and farther in between fights with him, unwilling to face her war with Dietrich could indeed be part of a much larger war, one that must be faced rather than denied.”
“Dietrich wants to disprove there was any illicit relationship in his background which would soil his family and his career, and Cate wants to fix her family, but do it superficially without ever having to dig into any dirt.”
A few secondary characters having an important role are Grandpa, the supposed US runner who had wooed a German woman during Berlin’s 1936 Olympics, now sits quietly, denying speed and running are in the family, and whittling sticks to splinters under his wife’s accusation he isn’t the same man she’d been engaged to before going overseas before WWII. Grandma, his wife, knows something is wrong but doesn’t know what. She fights the rejection she perceives from Grandpa with rejection of her own by moving into the back of her little bookstore and operating a literary crusade there for people who are victims of broken loves. Her life is spent searching for what happened that ruined her relationship with the man who still became her husband, her determination for vindication leaving her family in ruins. And Emerson is Cate’s fiancé, a New York senatorial candidate, happily on the tightrope of looking perfect in the public’s eye. His allegiance to her becomes shaky as the dysfunction and history of her family background unfolds. His choices affect Cate, but she learns her own choices matter much, much more.
We asked Colleen if there are any villains. “Yes, behind the story of the illicit relationship that formed during Berlin’s 1936 Olympics, is the well kept secret that Grandpa was placed in the Olympics by a criminal army officer to run in disguise,” she explained. “Grandpa’s superior, Lieutenant McCoy, pegged Grandpa as fast while a soldier, and slipped him into Germany as a runner. While there Grandpa was to woo a young German girl and gift her with a mirror McCoy had placed secret US military information behind for German spies. Her apartment was to be broken into and the mirror stolen by the Germans, but Grandpa confounded their plan by falling in love with the girl. McCoy realized the romantic attachment and had her apartment blown up, Grandpa threatened and sent home, and Grandpa told she’d been killed in the blast. When a military trial surfaces in the 1980s, McCoy, who has kept Grandpa silent for years through guilt and threats, points the finger at him, sending Grandpa to be tried for McCoy’s crimes.”
Out of Splinters and Ashes is a love story, but not written within the structure of a romance. It’s a story of hearts: broken hearts, angry hearts, and ones that never stop loving no matter what. “The past can affect our future,” Colleen said. “The consequences of love and hate can trickle into the next generations and set the course for children and grandchildren. Dietrich and Cate find themselves trapped in the consequences of past crimes, unforgiveness, and illicit relationships by others, and have to learn the power of choosing to right past wrongs, and bring life out of death. There is truth in fiction. Grandma hides herself in a bookstore believing more truth is told in fiction than in nonfiction. Leaving a husband who was never forthcoming, she believes authors are more honest and write what they know…maybe even things they wouldn’t admit outright…and agrees with her favorite playwright, Henrik Ibsen, that stories don’t tell us our exact answers, but point us in the right direction to find them.”
Colleen added, “Forgiveness alters courses. Whatever has happened to us, by us, or before us, the path can be transformed through forgiveness.”
You can find more about Colleen and her book here:
Web Site: http://www.colleenldonnelly.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ColleenLDonnelly
https://catalog.thewildrosepress.com/all-titles/5939-out-of-splinters-and-ashes.html
Let’s get a closer look at Out of Splinters and Ashes.
Cate is a runner. She prefers to help her fiancé run his New York senate race, but she finds herself running instead to fix what’s broken between her grandparents before he finds out—her grandmother had moved out of the family home, and her grandfather is accused of a pre-WWII relationship with a woman in Germany.
Dietrich is a German journalist with a spotless reputation. He prefers facts, but he finds himself lost in a world of fiction instead to prove his novelist grandmother couldn’t possibly have been the lover of a US runner in Berlin’s 1936 Olympics—especially when that runner’s granddaughter is Cate, a stubborn obstacle he should but can’t ignore.
Cate runs hard to cover up what Dietrich uncovers, until he shows her how it could have been—and how it could be again—that one can indeed love an enemy.
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