Interview with author Lars Hedbor

 

Welcome Readers to another installment of our author interview series. Today we have the pleasure of chatting with Lars, author of multiple historical fiction books.

JMR-Welcome to the Books Delight, Lars. Tell our readers where you live, what you do for fun and what does the perfect day look like?

LH- I’m a resident of the Pacific Northwest, which can be an awkward locale for a novelist of the American Revolution, but there is so much to do here that I don’t ever see myself returning to New England. 

I have entirely too many interests, spanning the gamut from astronomy to linguistics to gourmet cooking, but at the moment, I’m taking a great deal of pleasure in restoring antique clocks. 

A perfect day for me is one spent with my exceptionally patient wife, perhaps on the Oregon coast for some time on the beach and capped off with a decadent meal.

JMR-What’s your favorite historical time period? Why?

LH- As I’ve now written seventeen novels set during the era of the American Revolution, it’s difficult for me to claim a different historical time period, but the era of the early space race, culminating in Armstrong’s first step onto the Moon would have to be a close second.

JMR-Who is your favorite historical figure? Why? If you could ask them one question, what would it be?

LH- I find the tragic early death of Joseph Warren at Bunker Hill both heartbreaking and incredibly compelling.  He was both an early ideological leader of the independence movement and a fearless military man.  I am convinced that had he lived, we would refer to him in the same breath as figures such as Washington and Jefferson, and would marvel at the very thought of the Revolution succeeding without him.

As for what question I’d want to ask him, I think that the key one is why he was so reckless with his life in the Battle of Bunker Hill.  He was far more valuable to the cause of the Revolution as a living participant than he is as a nearly-forgotten martyr.

JMR- How did you come to be a writer of historical fiction?

LH- I’ve always learned best from historical fiction, and when a friend kept telling me about how important the Carolinas were in the Revolution, I asked him to recommend some good historical fiction of the Revolution set there.

The only book he was able to find was, frankly, not particularly readable, and when I finally put it aside, I uttered those famous last words – “I think I can do better myself.”  I sat down and wrote The Declaration, which has been well-received by readers ever since.

Over 3,500 pages and seventeen novels later, I’m pretty sure that I have achieved the goal of improving upon what I had read at my friend’s recommendation.

JMR- We are all affected by the highs and lows in our lives. How has your lived life informed your writing?

LH- What a great, challenging question!  My early books very often featured characters who were struggling with an absent parent – whether away at war or dead – and I realized a few years ago that this was likely not just due to the sad frequency with which such things happened in the Revolutionary era, but also because I was writing them in the wake of my own father’s passing. 

Another consistent theme in my books is that I write women who are spirited, and perhaps a tiny bit anachronistically independent-minded.  It is no coincidence that I grew up in a household with three strong-willed sisters, my grandmother, aunt, and exceptionally independent-minded mother.  I can only write what I know when it comes to the characters of women.  I think that my favorite of these characters is probably Louise from The Darkness, whom we meet as she is breaking the jaw of a handsy British soldier.

JMR- Did you visit anyone of the places in your book? Where did you feel closest to your characters?

LH- I grew up in the setting of my novel The Prize, which is set on the shores of Vermont’s Lake Champlain.  Hearing the legends of that conflict’s reach into that remote corner of the American Colonies deeply informed that book.

However, a later novel, The Convention, coincidentally has a scene that takes place on the opposite shore of Lake Champlain, at Fort Ticonderoga, as the British (through a superhuman effort) managed to place cannon on a hill overlooking that then-American stronghold.  Standing on the site where that cannon emplacement was located, looking down past the stout walls of that fortification, I could vividly picture the exultation of the British troops as they watched the Americans hastily abandon that outpost.

JMR- Lars, tell us about your series, Tales From a Revolution.

JG- As I mentioned, I got started by wanting to explore the Revolution as it unfolded in the South, and from the very beginning, I had a vision of writing a different novel for each of the colonies, as well as some of the future states. 

I have just one of the original thirteen colonies that declared independence left to write – Delaware – and I’ve been able to bring fresh attention to the contributions of the Spanish, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), Haitians, French, and even British and Loyalists to the overall story of our national origins. 

My books have been lauded both for careful attention to historical accuracy and for their compelling storytelling, and I’m very grateful to the many readers who’ve reached out to tell me what one or another of the volumes in the series have meant to them.

With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence swiftly approaching in 2026, I am very excited to be ready with a whole shelf of books for readers to dive into as their interest in the Revolutionary era is piqued by the associated celebrations.

JMR-What projects do you have in the pipeline?

LH- After I get my Maryland book (The Word, focusing on the role of evangelical Methodism in the early abolitionist movement) out later this year, I’ll be turning to Delaware, which will round out the original thirteen colonies in my collection. 

With that done, I anticipate casting a somewhat wider web to continue the series, continuing further down the path of writing about places with unexpected connections to the Revolution.  My most recent release, The Powder, was a great example of this sort of title in my series, set in Bermuda and focused on the 1775 Bermuda Powder Raid.

However, at some point, I will run out of locales that demand to have stories of the Revolutionary era written, and when I get there, I plan to turn to a new series exploring the early Republic era of American history, from about 1815 to 1850.  It was a time when our nation was busily inventing itself at every turn, and it’s one that has gotten woefully little attention in historical fiction.

JMR- Tell our readers how to find you on social media and the web.

LH- I am most active on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Lars.D.H.Hedbor), with daily postings of events in the Revolution of the date, as well as announcements, interesting articles, and the like.  You can find my own Web site at https://larsdhhedbor.com, where you can sign up for a free e-book to try out the series, as well as find book club and educator resources, buy signed copies, and see how the whole series relates, both in geography and time.

JMR- What question were you hoping I’d ask but didn’t?

LH- I love sharing the most rewarding moments so far of my career as a novelist of the Revolution.  At the top of the list is seeing my book The Siege adapted as a stage play, and then further adapted for a virtual performance during the pandemic. 

Watching skilled actors breathe life into characters that had originated in my imagination was both awe-inspiring and humbling.  They found so much more in my characters than I had put on the page, and it’s a memory that I’ll treasure all my life.

Close behind that, though, was the experience of speaking via a Zoom call with a gymnasium full of several hundred schoolchildren.  They asked the best questions of me, and seemed to really enjoy learning a little bit more about the Revolution than what they might have heard in their classes.

JMR- Thank you, Lars, for stopping by. Your books look really great! Readers, I’ve included a link to Lars’s book below. Please be sure to check it out.