Hey all,
Thanks for stopping by! This is an amazing giveaway. So grateful to Lisa Bergren and Robin Lee Hatcher for coordinating this Scavenger Hunt.
Believe me, it’s NO small feat coordinating 32 authors.
THE SCAVENGER HUNT SKINNY
The hunt begins on April 4 at robinleehatcher.com, noon Mountain time. The hunt ends on April 6 at midnight Mountain at robinleehatcher.com.
You have all weekend to complete it, so there’s no need to race.
Here’s what you have to do:
Collect the clue noted in red at each stop. Write them down. Then Go To Robin Lee Hatcher’s site.
Anyone and everyone can play. Even our international readers!
Prizes include a Kindle Fire HDX + $100 gift certificate and two runners-up will receive all 31 of our books.
So get to hunting!
And now it’s my pleasure and thrill to host the lovely and talented MELANIE DOBSON, my guest for the hunt.
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Secrets of a French Château
by Melanie Dobson
Last year I visited Normandy to research for my latest time-slip novel Chateau of Secrets. On a snowy March evening, I went with my friend Ann Menke to visit a mysterious château set on jagged cliffs above the River Vire. The medieval Château d’Agneaux had been bombed during World War II so only half of the thousand-year-old structure remained, but it had been beautifully restored with antique furnishings and modern appliances. It was a remarkable place, brimming with history and mystique, but even more remarkable than the house were the stories Ann told me about her mother-in-law who’d lived in the Château d’Agneaux during the war.
Genevieve de Saint Pern Menke was a young French noblewoman[M1] who grew up at the Château d’Agneaux. Under her family’s home was a tunnel where—according to legend— her ancestors hid during the French Revolution. When the Nazi Germans occupied her country and ultimately her home, Genevieve risked her life to hide both downed Allied airmen and members of the French resistance in this tunnel underneath the château.
Genevieve joined the Red Cross in her early twenties and drove an ambulance to assist wounded soldiers in France. After the war, she was awarded the French Croix de Guerre medal for carrying soldiers to her ambulance while under fire from automatic weapons and mortars, the Red Cross Medal of Honor for treating soldiers on the battlefront, and a second Croix de Guerre for courageously and successfully negotiating the release of the French villagers in Germolles before they were executed by firing squad. During the hours of negotiation, she told the German officer that “an honorable man would not kill innocent people.”
After the war, Genevieve married Herman Menke, an American lieutenant she met in Paris, and moved with him to California and then Washington State. But she returned often to her beloved France until she passed away in 2010.
Genevieve’s legacy of courage and compassion lives on through her five sons, her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and I hope now as well through my fictional characters inspired by her heroism.
Members of the French resistance and the Allied airmen whose plane went down in the valley below the château. Under the Château d”Agneaux were tunnels used to hide Genevieve’s ancestors during the French Revolution. During World War II, Genevieve used these same tunnels to rescue those were fighting against the German officers who occupied the château.
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Melanie Dobson is the award-winning author of thirteen historical romance, suspense, and contemporary novels. She lives near Portland, Oregon with her family, and when she’s not researching or writing, Melanie loves to explore abandoned houses and ghost towns, hike in the mountains, and make up stories about princesses with her two girls. More information about Melanie and her books is available at www.melaniedobson.com or on Facebook (click here).
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So glad to have Melanie here. This book sounds fabulous and of course, I love that she makes up stories about princesses with her girls. Way to go, Mel.
Thanks for stopping by my site to scavenger with us! Before you move on to Stop #32, Melanie’s site, to pick up your next clue, write down the clue at this stop:
– G.K.