BENEATH THE PEACE
For news and updates, subscribe to my monthly newsletter.
(Scroll down to subscribe)
The Idea.
It started years ago with a simple idea: to write a compelling novel, I needed to create likeable characters, put them in a unique environment, and throw challenge at them. I knew the environment right off the bat: a faith-based community like the one I grew up in. I wanted to show that for some, such a community can be a beautiful thing…but for others, destructive.
The Setting.
Having a unique setting and an intense plot backdrop were must-haves. I felt drawn to a place in Canada I’d once visited, a gorgeous locale—the Peace River region. My husband was all in. We left our jobs and pointed the nose of our travel-trailer north. I was hooked almost immediately—on the river, its people, and its epic story.
The Story.
Four years, five versions, and three trips to Peace River later, the novel is finished. It’s the story of Micah and Sam, set in the tumultuous 1960s, as they grapple with their beliefs, their roles, and their attraction to each other—despite sweeping dangers and irreversible change. Below, learn more about the story and its incredible contributors.
BENEATH THE PEACE: Concept Quick Look
During the tumultuous ‘60s, forty-eight Americans follow self-proclaimed apostle Aaron Piper into the Canadian Rockies to prepare for what they believe is an imminent apocalypse. They live and work together in peaceful harmony, dedicated to their mission and refusing to leave their isolated settlement, Zion, even when warned it will be destroyed by the damming of the nearby Peace River.
The apostle’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Micah, knows little of the outside world. She enjoys working in the fields and caring for the infant daughter of a troubled recent arrival. When U.S. Naval Academy dropout and novice detective Sam Dare infiltrates the group to investigate whether the troubled woman was kidnapped, his influence and that of Micah’s beloved friend, a mute trapper who has been slipping her forbidden novels, cause her to begin questioning her beliefs. Jealous, Micah’s arranged fiancé Levi conducts increasingly dangerous nighttime trials during which his teenage followers—including Micah and Sam—must defy death in order to prove their faith.
When Micah’s father, Aaron, is arrested and charged with kidnapping, she learns that Sam is not who she thought he was. At Aaron’s trial, she struggles with whether to testify and risk incriminating her father and destroying the only community she’s ever known.
BENEATH THE PEACE is part love story, part mystery—and an unblinking look at the continuum of belief that is at one extreme empowering, and the other, deadly.
What Early Readers Are Saying About BENEATH THE PEACE
“BENEATH THE PEACE kept me captivated from the very first page. The story has so many intriguing elements that keep you engrossed and wanting more. The setting is stirring, the characters are both provocative and endearing, and the narrative encourages you to consider how values, belief, and love compel people to make uncustomary life choices.”
— Michele S., beta reader
“To say I was hooked from the beginning is an understatement. BENEATH THE PEACE is a gripping story of extremes. Set in the Canadian wilderness, the reader is taken into a world and way of life that is both beautiful, and at times, unsettling. As the love between the two main characters develops, so does the suspense of what’s to come. Any time I had to put the book down, I found myself distracted by this story, clamoring to get back to it.”
— Katerina G., beta reader
“BENEATH THE PEACE by Liz Stroud is at the top of a short list of stellar novel manuscripts and novelists I’ve worked with in my career as a writing coach and instructor at University of Wisconsin-Madison. [It’s] well-written, on par with anything currently published and ‘based on true’…a moving, eye-opening emotional story in a setting readers won’t forget.”
Researching the novel was a story in and of itself.
You’ll read more detail in my newsletter (sign-up below), but here’s a taste of what went into writing BENEATH THE PEACE.
The River.
In many ways, this story is my love letter to the Peace River region.
When I started looking for a setting for the novel, I had vague memories of visiting, as a teen, some gorgeous river valley in Canada. I recalled my friend and I went for a horseback ride near Hudson’s Hope; from a high ridge, we were awed by a sweeping view of the valley below. In a subdued tone, our guides told us the whole valley would one day be flooded to make way for a reservoir. At the time, it was incomprehensible to me.
Still is.
I wanted to know if the flooding had actually taken place. My husband is a game kind of guy; he agreed to a research trip to the area. I fell back in love with it immediately: the Peace River has that effect on people. He did, too.
Over the next few years, we made three trips to the Peace River. I wanted the story to have as much historical, textural, and geographical accuracy as possible. And besides, the Peace just kept drawing us back.
It’s that kind of place.
At the time of this writing, a third and highly controversial dam—Site C—is under construction on the Peace River. While many in the region welcome the economic benefits of the dam, others, myself included, mourn the loss of the unparalleled beauty of what remains of the upper Peace River. Many fear the environmental impact of this new dam will be as bad as—or worse than—the original devastation my character Sam witnesses as he takes his final flight over the Peace.
The People.
It’s nigh impossible to adequately describe the people of Hudson’s Hope and the surrounding area. They’re fiercely independent, yet bound together by that particular force that grows out of years of shared history in a remote locale—while adapting rapidly to forced and irreversible change. They’ve had to adjust their livelihoods, their culture, and in many cases, their land and homes, all in the name of progress. Some support it, some fight it. All are among the most caring and personable people I’ve ever met.
And some of them informed characters in my story. Vic Gouldie (pictured, left) hosted us at his remote trapline cabin and showed us firsthand the life of a Canadian trapper. Parts of Vic crept into the philosophy and actions of the trapper in my story. I’m indebted to Vic and others who shared so much of their time and history with me. Read more about these incredible people in my newsletter.
The Dam.
The construction of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam had a profound and lasting effect on the geography and people of the upper Peace Valley region. Its impacts were both positive and negative, as a newly created exhibit in the Visitor Centre so eloquently portrays.
BENEATH THE PEACE is structured around the timeline of the dam, and although there was room in the novel for only a fraction of its fascinating history, I’m so pleased to be able to recount at least some of the details surrounding this incredible undertaking.
The Bridge.
Yep, it’s a real bridge, used heavily by the Allied Forces during World War II. It has been called “the bridge that defeated Hitler.” I first landed on the idea of using a Bailey to cross the dangerous gorge in my story while sitting on my sofa in the Midwest, researching bridges that could be assembled without heavy machinery.
I loved the idea of using a Bailey…but how could I get one in the hands of my characters, living as they did in an isolated stretch of the Canadian Rockies? This was a stumbling block for awhile, as I wanted everything in the story to be plausible. Then, on our first trip to the area, my husband and I were rewarded when we stumbled onto a real Bailey—this one—only a short distance from the story setting.
Further digging revealed many Baileys—surplus from the war—were stockpiled in Canada. One was indeed used in construction of the W.A.C. Bennett dam, and extra parts could have been laying around. And yes, my river consultant told me, the parts could have been riverboated in (during high water) from Prince George.
Bingo. My characters had their bridge.
The Era.
My incredible freelance editor, Alexandra Shelley, was the one who first pointed out, in her inimitably gentle-but-pointed style, that if I was going to set a novel in the late 60’s, I should consider how my characters were influenced by the tumult of the decade. When I dug into the research, I was amazed to find that some of the more notable events of the era fit my timeline to a tee—including the infamous riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The Faith.
Since I wanted to show the power of belief to inform choice, it made sense to set the story against a backdrop of clearly drawn—if unusual—faith. The paradigm of the group in the story, the fictitious community at Zion, is based in part on research I did into various isolated religious communities, and in part on the beliefs of the community I was raised in.
