Lance Ringel

As a teenager, I was introduced to The Great War – as WWI is called in Europe – through two excellent sources: Barbara Tuchman’s masterpiece book The Guns Of August and a CBS-TV series called World War One. They both made a great impression on me, spurring a fascination with the war that changed our world so completely. Fast-forward three decades later. I was actually stuck in bed, recovering from a near-fatal bout of hepatitis, and the local PBS station began re-airing the CBS series. At the same time, controversy arose over Bill Clinton’s campaign promise to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” I don’t know if it was inspiration or delirium, but an idea came to me: How about writing an historical novel in which two Great War soldiers fall in love? That hepatitis, I guess, was crucial to the genesis of my novel Flower of Iowa.

After I recovered, I spent the next six months researching the First World War, devouring everything I could learn about the battles, the generals, and above all the way people lived and died from 1914-1918. When I started this project, I quickly realized you can do one of two things with historical fiction: you can say, “Screw it, it’s fiction,” and completely use artistic license. Or you can try to make your story as plausible according to WWI history. I chose the latter route, which is much more work, but also much more fun.

But while being elbow-deep in books, articles, and photos, it dawned on me: I could spend the rest of my life researching and never writing a page. So I switched gears and started writing Flower of Iowa in spring 1993 while continuing to do research in libraries, in museums and on trips to Europe. (Friends claimed I got the idea just so I could travel to Europe!) I completed the first draft over the Atlantic, on a plane to London in the spring of 1997. Being a perfectionist, I have continued revising it for the last 17 years. But finally, with the centennial of the war upon us, it’s time to share Flower of Iowa with the world.