Christine Dillon asked Sydney Tooman Betts:

Why did you decide to write in your genre?

Sydney Tooman Betts Christine, do you mean Historical Romance or Native American Fiction? The first is easy. I'm a romantic at heart and the past always seems more interesting than the present. The latter would be much harder to answer briefly, but I will try.

When my daughter was in 4th grade, we read a great deal about Native Americans while home-schooling. Not only did the subject capture me imagination, but I was also struck by the lament of a Blackfoot man re: Christianity dividing his people. This stirred my heart, realizing so many efforts on the part of missionaries during the 1800's included colonization in addition to the gospel, forcing many native people to believe they had to abandon their ways of life in order to follow Jesus.

As I began contemplating what might have happened had a purer message been delivered, I remembered a film our church had shown about a couple who became missionaries in Papua New Guinea. The responses of this tribe in New Guinea were amazing, so when the Lord began nudging me to write, they became the basis for my portrayal of the Allies' responses in A River Too Deep.

Did I answer your question?

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