 |
| Murray Pura |
Murray
Pura’s Writing Inspiration
Writing Ashton Park
was the convergence of many roads in my life onto one main road that became the
novel. I created characters that were like the many English and Irish people I
had met over the years. The landscapes of both England and Ireland I knew and
into the story they went. I have many Anglican friends and I popped them into
the mix too – people like J.I. Packer, persons committed to the Christian
faith, full of courage but also full of grace and good will, happy to debate
theology with you as well as share a cup of tea.
I knew what had
happened in Ireland in the 1920s – uprisings and revolution – and that became
one of the major themes in Ashton Park.
I knew what had happened in France and Belgium between 1914 and 1918 too – on
the ground, in the air, at sea, and all that went into the story. One of the
three sons would be a British soldier stationed in Dublin, another a pilot with
the Royal Air Force twisting and turning in his biplane in the skies over
Europe, the third would serve on a battleship that flew the ensign of the Royal
Navy.
With the four daughters: one marries a clergyman, one nurses
in France and falls in love with an American pilot, another is in the north of
Ireland in Belfast married to a man who manages the family's shipbuilding
interests, a fourth is a bit of a firebrand and marching for the vote for
women, a suffragette. The more characters you have the more you can do with
your storyline and the greater historic and emotional sweep you can give your
novel.
Downton
Abbey, written by Julian Fellowes, is the latest in a long line
of stories about British aristocracy – there are Jane Austen’s novels, for
instance, like Pride and Prejudice and Emma, Anthony Trollope’s Barchester
Towers, R.F. Delderfield’s God is
an Englishman. So there are
similarities in my work with all those stories as well as Downton Abbey – class struggles between nobility and commoners; the
children falling in love with the right person but often as not the wrong
person in nobility’s eyes; the closer look at an aristocratic way of life
fascinating to most people; the life of the servants downstairs compared with
the life of the wealthy family upstairs. Where I differ most markedly is I have
a main character who is in politics, a fiancé who is an American, two estates
(one for winter, one for summer), and the family is Christian – not in a tepid
way but in a very committed and healthy and vigorous way – they pray about
things, discuss theology, take God and their faith seriously, act in grace, and
try to live lives in keeping with what they believe.
 |
| Click to reach Amazon. |
Murray Pura was
born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His first story was published in Teen Power in the USA when he was 16 and
earned him the princely sum of $25.00. His first novel was released in Toronto
in 1988. Since that time he has published seven more novels, two collections of
short stories, and a number of nonfiction titles including the Zondervan books Rooted and Streams. He has been a finalist for the Paraclete Fiction Award,
the Dartmouth Book Award, the Kobzar Literary Award, and the John Spencer Hill
Literary Award. In June of 2012 year he won the Word Award of Toronto for his
novel The White Birds of Morning
(Toronto's Word Award is the Canadian equivalent of the Christys). His novel The Wings of Morning has been nominated
by ACFW for best inspirational romance. Murray pastored for 25 years and wrote
on the side. He now writes full-time and currently publishes with Zondervan,
Harper One San Francisco, Barbour, Harvest House, and Baker, among others.
Murray has lived in Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Israel, and California, and
currently makes his home in southwestern Alberta near Waterton-Glacier
International Peace Park. He and his wife Linda have two children, Micah and
Micaela.
To learn more about Murray and his writing, please visit:
Website: http://www.murraypura.com, which includes
the blog murmurings
