Loving Sarah

Dear Reader Letter

Dear Reader,

LOVING SARAH is the third book in my series, The Caversham Chronicles, and I hope you enjoy Sarah and Ian’s story, too!

I fell in love with tall ships when I was growing up on the Texas Gulf Coast. I was fortunate enough to watch one being restored for several years while working in the building next to it. And almost from the time I could walk, I remember loving hot tea (even in summer). As I grew into a voracious reader, I discovered this short period of time in the mid-1800s where they had tea races on tall ships from China to London, before the Suez Canal was built and steam engines made sailing obsolete. I fell in love with those stories and prints of famous paintings of tea clippers at full sail racing back to London with their hulls loaded with China’s finest offerings for that year. I always knew I was a writer, even when I was forced to pass algebra, and it was inevitable that I would write a tea clipper story.

LOVING SARAH and LUCKY’S LADY are the clipper stories I had to write.

Because the timing is off by ten to twelve years for it to be official tea races, my fictitious setup to those races is here, where Lucky and Ian race each other home. In the next book, there is mention of the number of boats participating in the race home from China increasing.

Though the Ann McKim did exist at the time, she obviously did not come from Ian’s father’s shipyard because it did not exist. I created Watkins Shipbuilding, and Harbor Village, in the area called Curtis Bay to serve my story.

Also, there have been many spellings for the Chinese port of Fuchow (Fuzhou and Foo Chow). I chose to use the version my editor selected, though I have seen all of the above spellings in ship logs and other documentations regarding the tea trade.

The fourth book in the series, LUCKY’S LADY is out now also. And it picks up right where LOVING SARAH ends.

In his book, Lucky falls in love with an incredibly intelligent young woman who is a naval architect designing ships for her elderly husband who owns a shipyard that constructs the famous Baltimore clippers. Mary Michael Watkins is a young woman who desperately wants to conceive a child before her husband dies, and he wants her to have a child, too, because it’s the one thing he could never give her. The man even goes so far as to help her choose Lucky as the perfect candidate for siring said child and facilitating their time alone. Knowing she’s running out of time, and acknowledging there is more than just an ordinary attraction with the captain, Mary Michael accepts Lucky’s flirtatious overtures knowing that once his business with her shipyard is over, he’ll leave her and she’ll hopefully have a child to raise—a son or daughter to inherit the shipyard and her husband’s fortune.

What she doesn’t count on is falling in love with a man to whom family, loyalty, and love mean everything.

I would love to hear from you! So, if you have any questions or comments, I’m online at:

My Website

My f*******: Page

My Goodreads Page

And don’t forget to sign up for my NEWSLETTER!

Sincerely,

Sandy Raven