Can you imagine developing a relationship via mail? How about during a war? Well, our Guest Author, Linda Shenton Matchett, is talking about the inspiration behind her newest WWII Romance. See what you think.

Most of my World War II fiction is inspired by real events or real people, and Shetland Sunset is no exception. Part of The Resistance Chronicles that feature four Norwegian American siblings and their cousin who join various resistance networks in Scandinavia and northern Europe, Shetland Sunset is about the Norwegian fishermen who operated the clandestine operation later nicknamed Shetland Bus.
From 1941 until the end of the war in 1945, approximately 200 men guided their seventy-foot wooden boats across the North Sea from Shetland to Norway and back again during the winter months when there was total darkness. The journey, a distance of 190 nautical miles one way, took thirty-six to forty-eight hours to complete. Without lights. In arctic temperatures across churning seas. Navigation was done via the stars and a compass.

The boats carried weapons, ammunition, and agents to occupied Norway and ferried refugees and downed airmen to Shetland, all while attempting to avoid German patrol boats, aircraft, and submarines. Initially the group began the missions on their own, then Britain’s Special Operations Executive got involved and provided faster boats, but the danger was no less.
Because the men weren’t part of the military, if captured they would be treated as spies subjected to treason. Forty-four men died during the operation, twenty of them at the hands of Germans.
Considered wildly successful, the “Shetland Gang” made 198 trips to Norway transporting 192 agents and delivering nearly four-hundred tons of weapons and supplies, and seventy-three agents and 373 refugees were brought out.
A part of my own “real life” inspired the story as well. I met my husband in my junior year in high school, but we didn’t begin dating seriously until well into my senior year. I attended college five hundred miles from home, so we developed our relationship via letters, much like Tonje and Askel when she remains in Norway, and Askel relocates to Shetland

Shetland Sunset

Bonded by a cause but an ocean apart, will their love survive a world war?

After months in Norway helping his cousins with their fishing business, American Askel Westgard seems trapped when the Germans invade until he has a chance to get back at the Occupiers as part of the Shetlandsgjengen, or Shetland gang, a group of fishermen who transport weapons and equipment from Shetland to Norway under cover of darkness. Unfortunately, the beautiful Norwegian woman he’s just met refuses to join him in safety. Will he ever see her again?
Distraught when the Germans overrun her beloved Norway, Tonje Bondevik refuses to take the occupation sitting down. She joins the fledgling resistance movement, deriving great satisfaction distributing the underground newspaper and performing acts of sabotage…until the day the Nazis come looking for her, and she must flee for her life. Perhaps she should have listened to the handsome Norwegian American when he offered to take her to Shetland.

Linda Shenton Matchett writes happily-ever-after historical Christian fiction about second chances and women who overcome life’s challenges to be better versions of themselves. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she was born a stone’s throw from Fort McHenry (of Star-Spangled Banner fame) and has lived in historical places all her life. She is a volunteer docent and archivist at the Wright Museum of WWII. She now lives in central New Hampshire where she explores the history of this great state, immerses herself in the imaginary worlds created by other authors, and drinks copious amounts of tea.
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