Road Trippin’ with Tyndale and Melanie Dobson: Stop #9
Welcome to Tyndale Fiction’sRoad Trip Scavenger Hunt! We’re so happy you are here. To participate, collect the key words through all 13 stops in order, so you can enter to win our grand prize giveaway!
Some details:
The adventure begins on Wednesday, August 1. You’ll have two weeks to make your way through all the stops (giveaways will close on Tuesday, August 14).
While you do not have to start at Stop #1, keep in mind that the grand prize giveaway phrase will begin with the word you collect at that first stop.
To complete your submission for the grand prize giveaway, be sure to collect the key word within each author’s blog post, submitting the final, completed phrase in the form hosted on this page.
Also, be sure to enter the giveaways these authors are hosting on their blogs!
Enjoy the journey—we hope you’ll discover new books along the way as you hear from Tyndale Fiction authors about road trips, the settings of their novels, and more!
Happy road tripping!
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I am so pleased to welcome my friend and fellow Tyndale author Melanie Dobson to my blog today. Melanie’s July release is a WWII time-slip story called Hidden Among the Stars, about hidden treasure, a castle, and ordinary people who resisted evil in their own extraordinary way. Publishers Weekly gave it high remarks, calling it “an exciting tale” that“will please fans of time-jump inspirational fiction.” Melanie’s capacity for research, eye for detail, and skill with imagery will convince you that she’s visited every place she writes about—and many she has, including the Austrian castle in this story! Welcome, Melanie!
Author Melanie Dobson
Hallstatt’s Hiding Places
By Melanie Dobson
Melanie & Jon Backpacking
Backpacking across Europe—that’s how my husband, Jon, and I decided to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. We savored the old-world culture and charm as we hiked along Italy’s coast, toured medieval castles in Germany, and cruised the canals in Belgium, but we both left a bit of our hearts in an ancient Austrian town called Hallstatt.
Near the end of our monthlong trip, a ferryboat met Jon and me and our oversized packs at a train station along Hallstättersee (Lake Hallstatt), delivering us to the village on the opposite shore. Hallstatt’s wooden boathouses and storybook homes seemed to be clinging to the side of an Austrian Alp, and the moment we stepped off the ferry, we crossed through a portal of sorts, traveling back a few centuries as we walked along a cobblestone lane to the town square. The rugged, snow-capped mountains and alpine lake, the quaint village with its church steeples and waterfall that spilled into town—all of it captivated us.
Austria
Along the shore, hidden partially by trees, we could see spires of an abandoned castle, and I wanted to know its story. No one in Hallstatt could tell us who’d lived in the castle—at least, not in English—so my husband agreed to a new adventure. With a swan as our escort, we glided across the lake in an electric boat so I could study the rusty turrets, boarded windows, and old boathouse resting in the water like a felled log.
Instead of quelling my curiosity, the visit ignited the match of inspiration in my mind. Who had lived in this castle and what happened there? I began writing in my journal that night, trying to capture my rogue thoughts on paper, hoping that one day a novel would emerge from the ashes of this castle’s story.
Austria
When we returned home, I began researching more of Hallstatt’s history and discovered that this region, in all of its beauty and mystique, had been infiltrated by an enemy in 1938. This town and the surrounding Salzkammergut became a mountain retreat for Nazi officials who built mansions on the shores of its many lakes and tested submarines in the deep water. They also used salt mines in the mountains to hide “ownerless treasure,” the gold bullion and artwork they’d stolen from the Jewish people.
The Nazis intended to build a Fourth Reich in this alpine fortress, but the Allies had other plans. Near the end of the war, these lakes became a dustbin of sorts, collecting whatever the enemy dumped into their waters—weapons, counterfeit banknotes, concentration camp lists—as they fled south from the Allied troops. The Devil’s Dustbin, locals call it.
Lake Hallstatt plunges more than four hundred feet between the mountains. Because of its depth and the many hiding places in the underwater forests, caves, and shifting sands, divers continue finding World War II artifacts, almost eighty years after the war. Some still believe there’s a treasure trove buried on the bottom, but no one has reported finding any gold.
Austria
As the years passed after our trip—and access to online material grew—I was able to find out more about Schloss Grub, the medieval castle on Lake Hallstatt’s shore. One of its first owners was an eccentric salt administrator named Count Christoph Eyssel von Eysselsberg who stated in his will that his casket must journey across the lake every fifty years, from Hallstatt’s village church to his former home. During World War II, I discovered, this estate was used as a Hitler Youth camp, but my imagination had to fill in many gaps about what happened there after Austria was annexed into Nazi Germany.
Much has been written about World War II treasure since Jon and I visited Hallstatt, but a story about this castle and what happened to the heirlooms of the Austrian Jewish people continued to burn inside me until I finally put it on paper. So I built Schloss Schwansee—Castle of Swan Lake—in my mind, inspired by Eysselsberg’s story, and created a cast of historical and contemporary characters who are searching for lost treasure.
Hidden Among the Starsis a time-slip novel about an Austrian castle and treasure and fairy tales, but most of all, it’s a story about God using ordinary people across Austria to resist evil in their own extraordinary way.
Melanie in Austria
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Here’s the Stop #9 Important Information:
You can purchase Melanie’s book, Hidden Among the Stars, here . (link: https://www.tyndale.com/search?q=hidden+among+the+stars&f= }
Clue to write down: and
Link to Stop #10, the next stop in the scavenger hunt, on Melanie’s Site! {link:http://melaniedobson.com/road-trippin-with-tyndale-and-courtney-walsh-stop10}
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Cathy Gohlke’s Giveaway from Until We Find Home — a book from England, depicting the lovely and story inspiring home of Beatrix Potter, a tea towel with a beloved quote from C. S. Lewis, and a signed copy of Until We Find Home. To Enter the Drawing, leave a comment that includes the answer to this question from Melanie’s post above: What was the object that the eccentric Count Christoph Eyssel von Eysselsberg stated in his will must journey across the lake every fifty years, from Hallstatt’s village church to his former home?
Link: http://www.sandrabyrd.com/road-trippin-with-tyndale-and-cathy-gohlke-stop-8/
The post Road Trippin' with Tyndale and Melanie Dobson: Stop #9 first appeared on authorcathygohlke.com.
