About the Book

Book: Chasing the Blue Boat: A Novel of Longing Author: Connie Kallback Genre: Historical Coming of Age Release Date: November 26, 2024

Nine-year-old Dana Foster will follow her older brother, Luke, wherever he goes. From climbing on ledges, jumping in a fish pond, and causing general mischief, Luke is fearless. But when tragedy strikes the Foster family, everything that Dana has ever known is suddenly turned upside down. When the storms of life come, will the Foster family stand firm in their faith? Or will they shatter under the pressure? Suddenly, a blue boat that Dana and Luke received from their uncle leads Dana on a journey of faith, hope, and love that she will not soon forget. In this coming-of-age story, discover the truths of God’s grace in suffering, the blessing of forgiveness, and how to hold on to your faith when all hope seems lost.

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About the Author

Connie Kallback grew up on the plains of Cheyenne, Wyoming, attended the University of Wyoming, and graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle. She transitioned from English teacher to publishing in New Jersey with CCMI/McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, and CPP, Inc, in positions from writer to acquisitions and managing editor. Her early writing, penned while teaching, appeared in magazines, newspapers and literary journals. No longer wearing the hats of Mary Poppins or Sherlock Holmes, necessities of raising six children in two separate families, she writes in South Carolina where she lives with her husband.

More from Connie

The idea for Chasing the Blue Boat began with the memory of a dangerous escapade from my early childhood years. The thought of it scares me to this day. I grew up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and lived one block from the Wyoming State Capitol Building. One day I followed my older brother there, up nearly 20 steps from the ground to the grand side entrance with giant doors flanked by a waist-high wall and soaring support columns. We scaled the wall close to the building and placed our feet on an architectural ledge that circled the entire structure. Hoping to follow it all the way around, we began to sidle sideways, hugging the stone. I remember being scared, but my unrealistic stage of thinking made me hope the grass would break my fall! We made it around the first corner – I don’t know how – and continued along the front until a woman in an office inside spotted me. Knowing we shouldn’t be there, we reversed our steps and ran home. That’s how the fictional coming-of-age story begins. Dana, the young girl, joins her brother in many adventures before a tragedy changes her whole family and sends each of them on separate journeys of suffering, accompanied by hope and forgiveness.

Interview with the Author

If a reader were to ask you what author you are like, what would you answer?

In my wildest dreams, I’d like to say I’m like Harper Lee who wrote one novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, likely the best known coming-of-age novel in America. (Go Set a Watchman, a sequel to Mockingbird, came out in 2015, the year before her death.) Because Mockingbird’s main character, Scout, is six at the beginning of the novel, and eight or nine at the end, the novel covers about three years.

I published a coming-of-age novel, Chasing the Blue Boat, with a young girl, nine-year-old Dana, as the protagonist and an approximately three-year span for the novel’s duration. I worried that Dana wasn’t old enough to qualify as a true coming-of-age character because the genre implies the protagonist must endure a life-changing experience that typically transports her from child to adulthood. Most coming-of-age novels feature teenagers. I was relieved to recall these similarities with Mockingbird. In both cases, the young girls are introduced to the adult world in ways they couldn’t have imagined. Both plots are definitely coming of age.

As for Harper Lee and me, few other comparisons exist except that she attended the Methodist Church in Monroeville, Alabama, for most of her life except for college and the few years she lived in New York. I went to the Methodist Church in Cheyenne, Wyoming, from birth until I moved away after college. So, there’s another thing. She also spent a few years writing and rewriting Mockingbird before its publication. I can check several years off, too.

If you could travel back in time, what time period would you go to?

I feel as if I wasn’t meant for today’s digital world in spite of the ease of researching on the web. I’d go back to my grandparents’ era, definitely not digital but not so long before many useful, time-and-labor-saving inventions. I don’t want to rough it all that much.

Born in the late 1800s, my grandparents married in the fall of 1916. Both applied under The Homestead Act for acres of land in northern Wyoming where they could see Devil’s Tower. My mother and her sister were born in that homestead cabin, but Grandma was homesick for family. They sold out and drove a new automobile down to Wyoming’s southeast corner. My mother said they had to stop about every fence post to change a tire. Grandpa worked in the Union Pacific Railroad machine shop in Cheyenne for the rest of his life and enjoyed the challenge.

Our thriving nation bulged with new inventions. Grandpa talked about many that occurred during his lifetime – airplane, 1903; moving assembly line for cars, 1913; automatic washing machine, 1937; and more. My grandparents used an icebox before electric refrigerators came along in 1913. As a child, I had the unique experience of watching the iceman deliver a giant block of ice that rested with tongs on his leather-covered back when he delivered it to an apartment grandpa rented out in his basement. It’s a nostalgic glimpse of something that no longer exists.

He bought the first TV in our family in 1953, a couple of years before my parents bought one. Our whole family, six of us, huddled with Grandma, Grandpa, and another aunt in their small living room to watch Milton Berle and other family comedy shows that were the main evening attraction then.

Grandpa thought he was living in an exciting time full of changes, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have enjoyed the digital age either.

What is your favorite hymn and why?

For my entire life I have found awe in studying the sky and its cloud formations by day and stars by night and wonder how God created them. For that reason, I can barely make it through the singing of one verse of How Great Thou Art without a tear trickling down my cheek. His majesty appears in unfathomable mountains, oceans, and rivers.

As a child in Sunday school, I also sang, This Is My Father’s World, a hymn similar in theme and in the way the notes rise triumphantly as the words of the title repeat themselves. One of its phrases, In the rustling grass, I hear Him pass, He speaks to me everywhere, alludes to our relationship with God. Both hymns are simple, yet magnificent.

What is one thing readers would be surprised to learn about you?

I raised two families. When my two sons from my first marriage were in their early 20s and working, I married a man with four children, ages 4 to 8. All six have become responsible adults, although there were days when I worried that would never happen. God is good.

What is one question you would like readers to ask about you? What is your answer?

Why and how did I begin to write? I first started writing while working part-time in the early seventies in a hardware packaging plant, tossing nuts, bolts, and odd pieces of hardware into hoppers automatically fed with screws. It was mind-numbing work. To keep my sanity, I created poems in my mind and jotted them down during breaks. When The Christian Home published my poem for $8, I quit working there to give more time to write.