Grace Changes Everything with Pepper Basham

I’m so delighted to welcome Pepper Basham today. I just finished reading her marvelous book, The Mistletoe Countess, and I was so captivated by her delightful heroine, that this book has climbed to the top of my list for Best Reads of 2021. Such a fun story! The heroine is a sun-shiny book nerd and absolutely adorable. This story has is all: whimsy, humor, mystery, and lots of romance. All at Christmas. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend that you grab a copy. You won’t regret it!

Here’s Pepper to tell us more about the inspiration that led to this marvelous story . . .

The Houses of The Mistletoe Countess

Have you ever toured a grand house? Do you have a favorite one?

I LOVE visiting grand houses, whether in the U.S. or abroad. In fact, my Christmas novel, The Mistletoe Countess, started during one of my regular visits to Biltmore House, a beautiful country estate house in Asheville, North Carolina. Since I live in Asheville, visiting Biltmore is a regular part of my month and, as usual, I had to stop by one of my favorite rooms of the house: The library.

The library is a two-story space with books cover three walls. The fourth wall is comprised of large windows that overlook the view of the distant mountains. There is also a massive marble fireplace, spiral staircase, elegant furnishings, and…a secret stairway.

Oh yes! What would any grand house be without a few secrets, right? Actually, the staircase isn’t super-secret, but it’s not easy to see or find. The “secret” stairway is hidden behind the marble fireplace and leads to a stairway to a second-floor bedroom hallway. Fun, right?

On one particular day, while I was touring the house and walking down that second floor hallway, I stopped at the bedroom that sits right beside the “secret” entrance to the library. It’s called the Sheraton Room. A gorgeous space, like all the other elegantly furnished rooms of this “chateau” in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Biltmore

While I stood there, a question popped to mind: What sort of person would want their room to be as close to the library as possible? (Just in case they need to sneak down, unobserved, for a clandestine meeting with a book?)

And that’s how Gracelynn Ferguson Percy began to find her way onto the page. I didn’t know she’d turn out to be one of the most delightful characters I’d ever written. Her joy and innocence, her honesty and optimism, made each scene with her a delight. But what I enjoyed also was that, though she was young and naïve in many ways, she didn’t back down from confrontation and wanted truth to prevail. I suppose I see her as a practical dreamer, because, though she lived within her love of stories, she was quite capable of dealing with real-life situations too.

Unfortunately, Biltmore is, usually, not too keen on folks using their lovely house in fiction, so I located another grand home within the Blue Ridge Mountains and used it as my “model” for Whitlock, the estate house in the U.S. where the story first begins. The real home is called Swannanoa Mansion and is a beautiful Italian Renaissance Revival villa on the outskirts of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. You can find out more about it here (plus, just like in The Mistletoe Countess, it was built by a doting husband for his beloved wife).

Swannanoa

Then, I fashioned the English estate of Havensbrooke after Tyntesfield, a lovely Victorian Gothic Revival house in North Somerset, England. (Though Havensbrooke has a darker, broodier feel than Tyntesfield).

TyntesfieldClick here to purchase from Amazon.

Aren’t these places lovely?

Pairing the “brighter” American house with Grace to the “darker” English house with Frederick was a visual for one of the main heart questions of this story:

What happens when grace (or Grace) comes into our lives?

If you’ve been shown grace, you know.

Grace brings hope, joy, light, and life.

It’s one of the reasons we celebrate Christmas, right? Light shone into a dark world and brought hope. Peace. Life.

Grace.

So that’s just another reason why I love this story.

Grace.

Because Grace changes everything.