Spotlight & Giveaway: THE LAST LIFEBOAT by Hazel Gaynor

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Hazel Gaynor to HJ!

Hi Hazel and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, THE LAST LIFEBOAT!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Two women’s lives become fatefully entwined when an evacuee ship carrying British children to Canada during WW2 is torpedoed in the Atlantic. Alice King finds herself in a lifeboat with other survivors while, in London, Lily Nicholls desperately awaits news of her children. Inspired by true events, The Last Lifeboat is a very different story of WW2, an emotional rollercoaster of human courage and endurance, and I’m so excited for readers to turn the first page!
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

‘As she looked around the station platform, at Georgie and Arthur Nicholls and dozens of other children whose welfare and safety she and half a dozen escorts were now responsible for, she felt a crack in her heart. Despite Eleanor Heath’s warning not to get emotionally attached, Alice quietly accepted that she already was.’
‘They are both so cold, their skin brittle and crusted with salt. Like barnacles, they are stuck to her now, their fates, and their lives, permanently entwined.’

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

The original working title when I pitched the idea to my agent was I REGRET TO INFORM YOU, and then the book was known as SHIP OF HOPE and THE DISTANT HOURS for a while. For various reasons, none of those titles stuck. I now can’t imagine it being called anything other than THE LAST LIFEBOAT. The story that unfolds in the book is based on remarkable true events surrounding a torpedoed ship taking British evacuees to Canada during WWII, and a lifeboat from that ship which was lost in the Atlantic Ocean for eight days. The cover designer, Colleen Reinhart, and the art department at Berkley did such an amazing job. I was invited to share covers and images I loved, and to express my hopes and dreams and key words I hoped the cover would convey. This was the first concept I was shown and with only a few minor tweaks, the final cover was agreed. I especially love the fact that the photographer captured images of his granddaughter in various poses to represent the children in the lifeboat.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

I don’t want to give anything away, but while this book isn’t a romance, there are – I hope – satisfying resolutions to the connections formed between several of the characters. The book is partly about the circumstances in which people’s fates are thrown together during the disruptive events of war, and how our paths can follow very different directions when we are challenged to step outside our day-to-day and our comfort zone.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

So many scenes brought me to tears. This is such an emotional story, and the fact that it is based on actual events makes it even more visceral. Again, to avoid spoilers, it’s hard to be specific, but suffice to say, tissues will be required!

Readers should read this book….

if they love historical fiction and/or stories of survival, hope against adversity, and stories of human connection and endurance. As with all my books, I hope readers will be entertained, and that they will finish the book feeling emotionally connected to my characters. I also hope they might discover a part of history they weren’t aware of before reading the book, but should never feel that they’ve attended a history lesson! I believe every book has a slightly different message for every reader; that everyone will find within it whatever they were meant to find.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I can’t say too much just yet, but I can share that my next novel takes place during the dust bowl era of the 1930s and will be my first novel set entirely in the USA. Driven by an intriguing female character and her estranged niece, the story explores themes of self-discovery, finding hope within adversity, and how far we will go to protect those we love. It was pitched to my editor as ‘a story you already know; a woman you don’t’, and I cannot wait to share more detail in the coming months!
Heather Webb and I are also currently cowriting Christmas With The Queen, which is set over the first five Christmas seasons of Queen Elizabeth IIs reign and revolves around a will-they-won’t-they romance between a chef in the royal household and a royal correspondent working for the BBC. We’re having such fun writing it!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One finished copy of THE LAST LIFEBOAT by Hazel Gaynor to a reader with a valid US shipping address.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What makes a book particularly memorable to you? Is it the writing, the characters, the plot, your emotional response, or something else?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Book Info:

Inspired by a remarkable true story, a young teacher evacuates children to safety across perilous waters, in a moving and triumphant new novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor.

1940, Kent: Alice King is not brave or daring—she’s happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she’d long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher—to help evacuate Britain’s children overseas.

1940, London: Lily Nichols once dreamed of using her mathematical talents for more than tabulating the cost of groceries, but life, and love, charted her a different course. With two lively children and a loving husband, Lily’s humble home is her world, until war tears everything asunder. With her husband gone and bombs raining down, Lily is faced with an impossible choice: keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme, where safety awaits so very far away.

When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other—one on land, the other at sea—will quickly become one another’s very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined.
 
 

Meet the Author:

Hazel Gaynor is an award-winning New York Times, USA Today, Globe and Mail and Irish Times bestselling historical novelist. Her debut novel, THE GIRL WHO CAME HOME, was awarded the 2015 RNA Historical Novel of the Year, and her novels have since been shortlisted for the 2016 and 2020 Irish Book Awards, the 2019 HWA Gold Crown Award, the 2020 RNA Historical Novel of the Year and the 2021 Grand Prix du Roman Historique. Her latest novel, WHEN WE WERE YOUNG & BRAVE/THE BIRD IN THE BAMBOO CAGE was a national bestseller in the USA. Hazel’s co-written novels with Heather Webb have all been published to critical acclaim, winning and being shortlisted for several international awards.

Hazel was selected as a 2015 WHSmith Fresh Talent pick, and by Library Journal as one of Ten Big Breakout Authors. She is published in twenty-five territories and her books have been translated into eighteen languages. Originally from Yorkshire, England, she now lives in Ireland with her husband and two children and is represented by Michelle Brower of Trellis Literary Management, USA.

For more information, visit www.hazelgaynor.com | @HazelGayno