Meet Lynn Austin

Although Lynn is now a successful author, getting started as a writer was a slow process. “After my youngest child was born nearly 17 years ago, I finally sat down to write for a few hours every day while she and my 2-year-old son napped, and my 8-year-old son attended school,” she says. “Those ‘stolen’ minutes soon became very precious to me. I found writing so enjoyable, I became hooked for life!”

Known for her scrupulous attention to historic detail, Lynn spends many months, even years, researching the material for her novels. To prepare for writing Chronicles of the King series, she spent five years reading everything she could find on life in Israel during the 8th century B.C.—-but she is no armchair time-traveler.

“My favorite method of research is the hands-on kind,” Lynn notes. “In 1989 I spent a month in Israel participating on an archaeological dig and earning graduate credit in biblical backgrounds from Hebrew University. I also visited the extensive collection of Assyrian monuments and artifacts at the British Museum in London. And of course, to research Hezekiah’s tunnel I needed to wade through the ice-cold, hip-deep water!”

Her quest for background material for her books doesn’t always take her to far-flung corners of the globe. Sometimes she finds inspiration closer to home. Such was the case when she wrote her well-received Eve’s Daughters, a powerful intergenerational story of four women.

“A few years ago, four generations of women in my own family sat down for an informal family reunion. Included were my grandmother (who is 100 years old), my mother, my two sisters and me, and our five daughters. As each generation talked about the challenges and choices they faced—and all the changes that have occurred in women’s lives over the years—the idea for Eve’s Daughters was born.”

Lynn’s interest in history shapes her writing, but her faith is an even greater influence on her work. Raised in a Christian home, her love for God is apparent in her stories.

Lynn's recent work includes Hidden Places, featuring the widowed Eliza Wyatt as she struggles to raise her three children and keep the family orchard afloat, and Candle in the Darkness the first book in her new series Refiner's Fire, about Caroline Fletcher, a southern woman raised to believe that slavery was appoved of by God, who gets drawn into the abolitionist movement. Lynn's upcoming novel, Fire by Night is the sequel of Candle in the Darkness

“I don’t consciously plan the theme of each book,” Lynn says, “but in retrospect I can always see how the book reflects the way the Lord was working in my own life at that particular time—through what the Scriptures were teaching me, through the events and people He placed in my life, through the Christian books I read, the sermons I heard, and so on.”

In addition to her busy writing and speaking schedule, Lynn is a contributing editor to The Christian Reader. Her newest book, Hidden Places, will be published by Bethany House in the summer of 2001. She lives with her husband and children in Illinois.

(Information for this profile was gathered from an exclusive CBD interview with Lynn Austin, as well as from information provided by Bethany House Publishers.) Posted May 2001