Spending some time with Jillian Cantor...plus a book giveaway

Photo by Galen Evans

We're thrilled to have Jillian Cantor back at CLC today. The last time she visited was in 2010 when her contemporary novel, The Transformation of Things, was published. This time around, she's here to talk about her latest historical fiction novel, In Another Time, which publishes next week. It sounds intriguing and Melissa A has it near the top of her TBR pile! Thanks to Get Red PR, we have one copy to give away!

Jillian Cantor has a BA in English from Penn State University and an MFA from the University of Arizona. She is the author of award-winning and best-selling novels for teens and adults, including The Lost Letter, The Hours Count, and Margot, which was a Library Reads pick. In Another Time will be published on March 5, 2019 and is a March 2019 Indie Next pick. Born and raised in a suburb of Philadelphia, Cantor currently lives in Arizona with her husband and two sons. (Bio courtesy of Jillian's website.)

Visit Jillian online: 
Website * Facebook * Twitter * Pinterest * Instagram

Synopsis:
Love brought them together. But only time can save them…

1931, Germany. Bookshop owner Max Beissinger meets Hanna Ginsberg, a budding concert violinist, and immediately he feels a powerful chemistry between them. It isn’t long before they fall in love and begin making plans for the future. As their love affair unfolds over the next five years, the climate drastically changes in Germany as Hitler comes to power. Their love is tested with the new landscape and the realities of war, not the least of which is that Hanna is Jewish and Max is not. But unbeknownst to Hanna is the fact that Max has a secret, which causes him to leave for months at a time—a secret that Max is convinced will help him save Hanna if Germany becomes too dangerous for her because of her religion.

In 1946, Hanna Ginsberg awakens in a field outside of Berlin. Disoriented and afraid, she has no memory of the past ten years and no idea what has happened to Max. With no information as to Max’s whereabouts—or if he is even still alive—she decides to move to London to live with her sister while she gets her bearings. Even without an orchestra to play in, she throws herself completely into her music to keep alive her lifelong dream of becoming a concert violinist. But the music also serves as a balm to heal her deeply wounded heart and she eventually gets the opening she long hoped for. Even so, as the days, months, and years pass, taking her from London to Paris to Vienna to America, she continues to be haunted by her forgotten past, and the fate of the only man she has ever loved and cannot forget.

Told in alternating viewpoints—Max in the years leading up to WWII, and Hanna in the ten years after—In Another Time is a beautiful novel about love and survival, passion and music, across time and continents. (Courtesy of Amazon.)

After writing contemporary fiction, how did you decide to switch to historical fiction? 
My first historical novel was Margot (published in 2013), and I didn’t so much decide to switch to historical fiction but decide I wanted to write a novel about Margot Frank, and I understood that in order to do it the way I wanted, it needed to be historical. From there I realized I really enjoyed immersing myself in other time periods and writing about women who have been largely overlooked in history books.

What is something you learned while writing In Another Time? 
Just after I’d started writing I went to speak with a Holocaust survivor’s group about my last novel, The Lost Letter. One woman shared with me that her family lived in Germany as Hitler was coming to power but her family refused to the leave because they were Germans too. Why should they have to give up their country? I thought about that a lot as I created Max and Hanna’s world in Germany.

If In Another Time were made into a movie, who would you cast in the lead roles? 
I think Emmy Rossum would make a great Hanna, and I could see Ansel Elgort as Max.

If you could live in another time period, what would that be? 
I’m not sure I’d want to live in another time? I love all my tech gadgets in our time, and many of the times I write about weren’t the best for women or Jews to live in. But if I had to choose, I was in high school in the early 90s, and I feel like in many ways it was simpler than what my kids are facing today entering high school. I didn’t have a cell phone but I’d just gotten email and (dial-up!) internet. No social media and we still made actual phone calls on landlines.

What is your go-to restaurant and your go-to meal at that restaurant? 
There’s a local bar and grill about five minutes from my house and close to where one of my kids has a weeknight activity. We pretty regularly drop him off and grab dinner there once a week. I always order fish tacos and sometimes a glass of rosé.

What is the last thing you won? 
The last game I won was a game of mahjongg with my friends. The only contest I’ve ever won was a raffle I entered at a fundraiser at my son’s preschool 10 years ago. I won the grand prize -- two roundtrip Southwest tickets. It was very exciting! I’ve never won anything like that before or since.

Thanks to Jillian for chatting with us and to Get Red PR for sharing her book with our readers.

How to win: Use Rafflecopter to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. If you have trouble using Rafflecopter on our blog, enter the giveaway here. 

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Giveaway ends March 5th at midnight EST.