An Interview with Kathi Oram Peterson about The Forgotten Warrior

I have to confess that when I saw that The Forgotten Warrior involved time travel back to Book of Mormon times, I wilted. The idea was just a bit too fantastic for me. But then I remembered how I loved reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court when I was in high school. And as a young woman, I was entranced by The House on the Strand. Mark Twain and Daphne du Maurier are pretty good company. If they can write about time travel, why not Kathi Oram Peterson?

I interviewed Kathy about writing this book and writing in general. Here’s what she said:

Liz: What age group is The Forgotten Warrior targeting?

Kathi: I've received fan letters from kids as young as ten, from young women who are in college, and from adults, so I think it has broad range.

Liz: I think you did a good job of creating things young people like to read about: action, strong characters, heroes, cliffhangers, a little bit of romance, even a flatulence joke. Is this in your comfort zone, or was it a departure from the usual for you?

Kathi: I have had such fun writing in the YA genre. A bonus in writing a time-travel in the Book of Mormon is researching the scriptures. I wanted my characters and plot to match real people and events as closely as possible. In doing this, my testimony of those brave prophets has increased exponentially.

Liz: What made you choose the Stripling Warriors as a subject for your book?

Kathi: I'd just finished writing a time-travel that had to do with the Book of Mormon and asked my son what era and story in the scriptures he thought would be interesting. His reply was, "You can't go wrong with the stripling warriors. There are battles and heroes." He was right. I also wanted this book to have a strong female protagonist, so I created Sydney Morgan. Young women need to know that they are warriors, too.

Liz: Yes, and Sydney is a strong female role model. I won’t reveal the contribution she makes to the success of the Stripling Warriors, but it’s a nice little twist to the story. What problems did the time travel aspect pose for you as an author?

Kathi: I had to have a fresh catalyst that would send the protagonist back in time. A cave had already been used, near death experiences have been done, even putting on old clothing or jewelry has been overdone. I wanted something specific to the Book of Mormon. One day as I pondered this problem, my daughter dropped by and she suggested that the stones carved by the brother of Jared could send Sydney back. Brilliant! As you can tell, I brainstorm a great deal with my family.

Liz: Ah yes, your family. Do you come from a word-loving family, or are you charting a new path?

Kathi: My mother was an artist. I have many of her paintings in my home. My father was the writer, but he never tried to publish. I wish they were still alive to see my book in print.

Liz: When did you begin writing?

Kathi: I've always liked to write. I remember in a high school English class we were told to write a fiction piece and I wrote about some monster who could morph into other creatures. The teacher made me read it in front of class, which when you're 15 is so uncool. I didn't start writing books, though, until after my first baby was born, which was too many years ago to fess up to.

Liz: What other things have you written?

Kathi: For years I worked on writing romantic suspense novels. I had so much fun doing research: went on a cattle drive, attended some very rustic rodeos, and fished the Snake River. The problem with research is more ideas for books pop in to my mind. I stopped writing for a while, so I could go to college and earn my BA in English. Afterwards I was hired by a curriculum publisher to write nine children's concept and biography books. When I left that job, I started in earnest to write young adult fiction.

Liz: I noticed at the end of this book, Syd doesn’t get transported home. Do we find out what happens to her?

Kathi: Yes. I've written the sequel to The Forgotten Warrior, which picks up where this story leaves off. In book two Syd meets Captain Moroni and helps with the battle for Zarahemla. I've also written a book that involves Samuel the Lamanite's daughter. Didn't know he had one, did you? I didn't know either until she appeared in my story. ;)

At this time, I'm writing a time travel series that takes a brother and sister back in time to when Christ was born. The sister goes to Rome and meets a Roman soldier. The brother goes to Bethlehem and meets a shepherd family. The working title for this series is Chasing the Star. The first book is finished. Right now, I'm working on book two.

Also An Angel on Main Street comes out in the fall of 2009. This story takes place in 1953 and is very near and dear to my heart. I created a small fictional town in Idaho. Eleven-year-old Micah Connors and his little family have recently moved to town. Micah’s father was killed in the Korean War. His mother works as a waitress and his little sister, Annie, is very sick. A few days before Christmas, a nativity begins to appear in the center of town. No one knows who is building it. Annie tells Micah that she believes when the baby Jesus arrives he’ll make her well. Her condition worsens and Micah doesn’t think she can wait until Christmas. He‘s desperate to find the nativity builder and borrow the Jesus doll for Annie. I won’t spoil it and tell you how things turns out.

Liz: Wow! You are a busy lady. I love the premise you’ve created for An Angel on Main Street. I can’t wait to read it. You have a great way of using sight, sound and smell to put people in the moment.

But back to The Forgotten Warrior, what message do you hope this book conveys to youth?

Kathi: It is my hope that the youth will realize how important they are to our Heavenly Father. The stripling warriors were awesome heroes and so are the youth of today. I'm holding a Latter-day Stripling Warrior Contest right now. People can enter a youth between 8 and 18, male or female, to be a Latter-day Stripling Warrior by writing down a kind deed or deeds they have done. I have received some amazing entries. Our youth are warriors for the Lord, especially now with all that is going on in the world. I think sometimes they forget that.

Liz: Thank you, Kathi, for doing this interview with me. And to all you readers out there, go to Kathi’s web site to enter a youth into her contest.

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Feeding the Missionaries and Other Reciprocal Acts

Last year I blogged about listening as an act of service. In that blog I confessed that I’m not a good listener. Today I’m going to go further and confess that I’m a particularly unwilling listener when it comes to the after-dinner ‘thought’ that missionaries always leave with the family that feeds them. When we have the missionaries over, I always invite them to give a thought and make myself sit attentively, and though I usually catch the spirit of what is being said and end up enjoying listening to the missionaries speak, I’ve never managed to look forward to it with anticipation.

So, with that kind of attitude, why do I keep inviting the missionaries to dinner? Because I remember when three of my children were out serving missions and how grateful I was for the members who watched over them and saw that they were fed. I feed these missionaries because other people fed my children when I couldn’t be there for them.

I was thinking about that—about reciprocating for service to my family--this morning after a phone call from one of my daughters. She called to visit and share a funny story about her cat bringing a squirrel into the house and the ensuing mayhem it caused. It was a normal little let-me-tell-you-about-my-day episode that was unusual only because of its normalcy, for this daughter was estranged from the family for a lot of years.

During those years, she had a visiting teacher and a Relief Society President looking out for her. I mean really LOOKING OUT for her. Bringing-her-into-their-home-for-months type of looking out. Seeing-that-she-had-proper-medical-care type of looking out. Listening. Forgiving. Believing in. I’m not talking about a short term commitment, either. This has been going on over a period of years. And, all the time they were reaching out and nurturing, these good women were reinforcing things this daughter had been taught at home.

Time is a great teacher and healer of old wounds, and this daughter was profoundly wounded by Life. Born into terrible circumstances, she spent seven years buffeted by an ugly world before she came to our family. Naïve, thinking love and structure would conquer all, I was unprepared to deal with the side effects of her previous experiences, and I made lots of parenting mistakes.

But, I used to tell her that she had been sent to our family because of her valiant spirit, and, though there were times when my faith in that statement faltered, I believe it again. I believe, too, that when the time was right, other supportive people were there to help her on her way.

She called us just after Christmas and said she’d been talking to her bishop, and together they were planning a program for her to get ready to go to the temple this summer. I look forward to that day, and to meeting these women that have been such an influence in her life.

I wonder, if I were this daughter’s visiting teacher, would I have gone the extra mile? That leads my thoughts to the ladies that are my stewardship, and I vow to do a better job as a visiting teacher.

And in the middle of this vow, I remember there are only two days left in the month and I’m only half done.

Yikes!

I’d better get at it.

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Wayfinders for the 21st Century

As I said before on this blog, I’m one who likes to stick close to home, to familiar surroundings. Whenever I set off alone to a new destination, be it a store or a friend’s house, I always allow plenty of get-lost time. My inner compass is calibrated towards things like Truth and Beauty, not the more practical East and West. In fact, people are always suspect of any directions I give, because I still can’t identify left and right when I’m under pressure.

So, having established that I’m directionally challenged, I’m going to blog today about the service built in to modern architecture and engineering for people like me. It’s called Wayfinding.

Wayfinding used to mean the ability to get across vast, uncharted expanses by means of dead reckoning or reading waves or winds or other subtle clues. Now it defines a profession, a subset of architecture or engineering, that deals with providing both subtle and unsubtle clues so people can find their way on highways, in urban areas and inside buildings.

The blatant, in-your-face clues are signs. Signs need to be large enough to read from a distance, clearly stated, and using universally-accepted parlance. For instance Restroom is the accepted American term for toilet facilities. We’re close enough to the Canadian border that I hear the term washroom frequently. I know the terms are interchangeable, but there are a lot of people who don’t, and they might think that a sign that said “Washroom this way” was talking about a Laundromat. Likewise, for those who are tempted to call their place of business a ‘shoppe’ and identify restrooms as ‘comfort stations’ or ‘little boys’ and girls’ rooms’, they shouldn’t. They are not serving their customers well when they depart from uniform nomenclature.

The signs need to be clean and uncluttered as well, as their job is to convey information, not confuse. However, remembering that Wayfinding is a subset of architecture, it’s a joy to see how a gifted designer can make the sign aesthetically pleasing as well as clear and concise.

Color and design are ways of providing more subtle wayfinding clues. In places like hospitals, where there are corridors for the public that are separate from those used by patients and staff, the public corridors will have different flooring, wall finishes and decoration from the more utilitarian patient-staff hallways. As a visitor, you will know at once when you have wandered into the wrong space.

More and more, we’re seeing hieroglyphs in our signage. I love the one that denotes a bicycle lane. With a couple circles and straight lines, the image is conveyed, and language isn’t an issue.


As I surfed around the internet, looking for bits of information I could sprinkle around, making it look like I knew more than I do about wayfinding, I found a blog where a fellow was protesting the lack of directional signs at subway station exits. He was advocating guerilla wayfinding: that citizens take it in their own hands to do this. He offered a stencil that people could make and go out in the dead of night and spraypaint a compass on the sidewalk at the subway entrances.

Later, he updated with a picture (to the left) where he found that someone had actually done that. You can find his blog and this picture at http://backspace.com/notes/2006/03/guerilla-wayfinding.php

I have never lived in—never even visited—a town that had a subway, so I can’t identify with that. But I have had the experience of exiting a large store through a different door than the one I entered. The mental scramble to find something familiar is a wayfinder’s reason for living. And actually, in my surfing, I found that wayfinders do put different identifying objects each entrance—things like statues, paintings, tile patterns—so you will be able to recognize the door you came in. It’s up to the person making an entrance to note those things.


Now that I know they’re there for a purpose, I’ll pay attention.



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Basil for a Creamy Tomato Bisque

I love basil. To me, it is the prince of herbs. Oh, sage may be a bit stronger in its fuzzy, musky way, and rosemary may be more pungent, but, to me, fresh basil says sunshine and blue sky and a Mediterranean villa. Aaaahh.


Every summer I make sure that I have a basil plant that I can run out and snip a sprig off of to put in my salad or put on the chicken before I pop it in the oven. I keep a pair of scissors handy so I can cut up the leaves instead of bruising them with a knife on a cutting board. I find that the edges of the leaves turn black if they’re not cut cleanly.

The problem with basil is, it’s a warm weather plant. It’s like me. Doesn’t like to be cold. So, I’m not able to set it out in my little container garden on my deck until July. Then, I can have a plant on my deck through July, August and September. About Mid October it’s getting pretty nippy at night, and I can see my basil plant starting to look kind of puny. And then one day, it just disappears. Pfffft. It’s gone. Like it never existed. It’s a plant that really, really can’t tolerate the least degree of frost.



So that leaves me fresh basil-less for nine months. Or, it did until I discovered a marvelous product put out by Utsalady Farm. It’s fresh basil you can buy at the grocery store, but it’s not like the cut herbs such as you can see in the picture to the left. That’s some packaged fresh basil I bought on the same day that I bought the basil in the next picture—both of them about a week ago.


Utsalady Farm is located on Camano Island, between here and Seattle, and they raise basil hydroponically. When it’s time to harvest, they simply pull up the whole plant and send it to market. You buy it, take it home, and put it in a glass with water in the bottom, where it continues to thrive.

Utsalady Farm is small--only about 10 acres--but it supports

two families.

They sell their entire crop to Haggen’s , an upscale grocery store in the Washington/Oregon area, so if

you’ve got a Haggen’s nearby, you can get Utsalady basil there.

Here’s my recipe for Creamy Tomato Bisque

1 quart chicken stock
2 cans diced tomatoes, pureed
1 full sprig fresh basil, snipped into tiny pieces
½ onion, diced
1 teaspoon salt
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tbsp. sugar


Heat above ingredients together, simmering for 5 minutes.

Dissolve ¼ cup cornstarch in ½ cup water and add to tomato mixture, stirring as it thickens.


Turn down to low and add ½ cup heavy whipping cream.

When you serve, snip basil to float on top, and grate parmesan cheese over the soup.



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Finding an Old Friend in Afghanistan

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) does a lot of good around the world. My acquaintance with the program began in 1965 when my parents went to Afghanistan for USAID. They were sent to Lashkar Gah, a small town in Helmand Provence in the south where a large hydroelectric/irrigation dam was built. My dad’s expertise was motors, and his task was to help the Afghans buy equipment and train them to maintain it.

My mother expected to work in the government office when she got there, but her Form 57 got lost in Washington DC. By the time it surfaced, she had taken a job running a small hotel/restaurant for AID to cater to visiting diplomats and the American Contingent in Lashkar Gah.


Mother had fifteen Afghan men working for her as cooks, waiters, houseboys and gardeners, and she became very active in their lives. Her letters home were so full of descriptions and anecdotes that I felt I knew some of them very well.

When my parents came home, they lived near us, and I’ll never forget the day the Russians invaded Afghanistan. I was at my mother’s house when she heard the news. She became pale and whispered, “Those people will never give up. The Russians don’t know what they’re getting into.”


Mother constantly worried about her ‘boys’ and fretted because there was no way she could communicate with them, for even if a letter could get through, most of them were illiterate.

One of the men who worked for her was Sakhi. Click here and scroll down to “Sakhi’s Wife and the American Hag” to read about him. That’s Sakhi’s picture to the left, holding his son. The picture was probably taken in 1968. If you read the link, you’ll understand why I cropped Sakhi’s wife out of the picture.


Fast forward to 2008. The head of USAID in Lashkar Gah found the website I just linked you to. He bought the book Lucy Shook’s Letters from Afghanistan, read it, and said that he would see if he could find any of my mother’s old crew. Old is the operative word, because Sakhi was about my age in the picture, and I’m now 67. In Afghan years, that’s ooooold.

We got an email last month from the USAID man saying he thought he had found Sakhi. It was a “my friend said that his cousin’s neighbor said” kind of a thing, but he was going to check it out and let us know.

I can’t tell you the joy I feel about the prospect of this man locating Sakhi. It’s like finding a long-lost friend. It’s as if the love that my mother had for these good peasant men has lingered and will reach out to touch their lives once more.

As I said, USAID is doing lots of good in Afghanistan. Click here to read about some other things they’re doing.

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An Update on Hani's Family in Gaza

Here’s an update on Hani, my young Palestinian friend, whose family was caught in the crossfire in the recent Israeli incursion into Gaza.

Hani’s cousin, a young woman of twenty-two ,was killed by a sniper. She and Hani had been raised in the same house and were very close. She had stayed behind when the families fled from the dangerous section of the city because her grandparents were too aged and infirm to leave. One morning, as she was standing in the kitchen talking to her brother, a shot came through the window and mortally wounded her. She died a couple days later.

Hani reports that all of his immediate family are safe. His sister had a baby during the early days of the conflict, but mother and child are doing well. His oldest sister’s house was hit by shells and her bedroom burned, and along with it her whole wardrobe, but there was no injury to anyone. Hani says that his mother’s prayers have changed, becoming more detailed and thankful that she and her children have sound arms and legs.

Things sound pretty grim, but even among the recital of destruction and devastation, you see a spirit of resilience and survivorship. I hope you’ll keep Hani’s family in your prayers.