Today we have the pleasure of sharing an episode from one of our favorite podcasts, the Lit Ladies Podcast. Here is more about their show:

We are three writers and moms exploring how to live out our faith in our literary lives. We span the country—from the coasts to the Midwest—and with different stages of life, careers, and favorite genres, we are sure to cover the literary landscape. In every episode, we’ll discuss books we love, reading life, and writing craft, using the Bible as our guide for beauty, goodness, and truth. New episodes drop every other Friday!

This Lit Ladies Podcast crossover with the Historical Bookworm team covers why historical fiction matters, how war settings shape stories, and what everyone is reading right now.

Key takeaways

• Historical fiction makes history personal, which helps you see how everyday people lived.
• Accuracy matters most when it grounds the characters and the social pressures of the era.
• War settings work best when the focus stays on human cost, resilience, and the ripple effects on families.
• Reading older books can mean meeting older blind spots, which calls for discernment instead of reflexive dismissal.
• Lesser-known conflicts can add fresh perspective, especially when anchored in solid research.

Karissa: Hello and welcome to the Lit Ladies Podcast. Today we’re doing a special crossover episode with our friends KyLee Woodley and Darcy Fornier and their historical fiction podcast. We’re so excited to have you here today.

Darcy: So excited to be here. We have so much fun hanging out with you guys.

KyLee: Thanks for the invite. Glad to be here.

Karissa: KyLee Woodley is a podcaster and author of the Outlaw Hearts series, adventure romances set in the American Wild West. Darcy Fornier is a podcaster and author of The Crown and the Axe, and they are both the hosts of the Historical Bookworm podcast, which is in its fifth season. It’s for lovers of inspirational historical fiction, and the show features author interviews, bookish and historical segments, and a wide variety of guests, from Christy Award-winners to high-quality indie authors.

Karissa: Before we jump in today, I want to know what is everyone’s favorite reading beverage of choice?

Christie: I usually drink water, or else I don’t really drink anything because I’m too busy speed reading. But today for the podcast, since we’re doing it in the morning, I get to drink coffee.

Darcy: Usually coffee. If I said anything else, my sisters would say I was lying. But I also enjoy hot chocolate or tea. Anything hot. I’m not going to be drinking lemonade even in the summer.

KyLee: The nice thing about being in the South is that the AC is always blasting. So it’s hot cocoa, coffee, soup, any time of the day. My current favorite beverage to go with my reading, which I seldom read, but audiobooks, big on audiobooks these days, is the Iced Pecan Crunch Oat Milk Latte. I don’t usually go to Starbucks. I find their coffee very bitter, but this is a blonde espresso. I get it without the foam. It’s too sweet and it takes up too much in my cup.

Karissa: I like to drink herbal tea. That’s my main comfort drink.

Karissa: What draws you to historical fiction?

KyLee: For me, I like the nostalgia. I grew up very sheltered. We didn’t have a TV until I was 12. My mom would just drop us off at the library, then go shopping, then pick us up whenever. We always had audiobooks or books on tape. When we did get a TV, it was black and white. We watched a lot of black and white shows. For me, I remember those good times with old classic films and literature.

There’s also this idea of, “What was.” Historical and fantasy are best friends because there’s that sense of wonder. But historical is like, this really did happen. This was really true. I like to dig into history and see who someone was, and go back to where they were if that’s possible. I love to research the way people lived and thought, the things they invented, and how resourceful they were.

Darcy: Mine is similar. It’s about the people that came before, and how their stories influenced our lives today. You can go to historical sites and almost touch the lives that they had there. We tend to study history as the big overview. This person was king, these wars happened, all this stuff. Historical fiction lets you dive into what it was like for the day-to-day person. Even if you’re writing about a king, you’re asking what motivated him and what it felt like. People are people as long as they’ve lived.

Karissa: That’s my favorite part too. How did people actually live, what challenges did they face, and what did they wear?

KyLee: I also like when an author challenges what we accept as historical norms. Bring out something different that we wouldn’t expect. Like a female rancher who ran a ranch with hundreds of cowboys.

I heard on a podcast that there was an African-American college in Waco in the 1860s. I had never heard of that. I want to learn the things that go against what people believe as a whole. I want to see the people who were counterculture in their time.

Christie: Whoever wins writes the history book. There’s so much that was lived and done that you don’t know about because it was shut down, or the history books made it seem nice and clean.

Karissa: Christie, do you have a favorite era to read or write about?

Christie: I haven’t read much historical in a while. I used to read a lot of Jen Turano because her voice is funny, witty, and sharp. For an era, late 1800s to 1940s. If there’s too much work to live, it pulls me out. I’m modern. I don’t want to learn about churning butter.

Darcy: A few modern conveniences is okay.

Christie: I would do a castle, like medieval, every now and then.

KyLee: That’s what’s fun about time travel or slip time. You get the comparison. Especially time travel, when someone modern comes into the past and you see how they react to everything.

Karissa: I just discovered Gabrielle Meyer. It’s sort of time travel.

KyLee: In those books, the women exist in two timelines until a certain age. Then they have to choose which timeline they’ll live in. What’s fun is that she explores different eras. You get contrast between two past timelines, like the Civil War and the 1920s.

Christie: I’d choose the ’20s, not the war.

Karissa: I love the Victorian era and the Regency era. I also love reading classics written in the period. You get the perspective of someone who lived in that era and took so much for granted.

Darcy: If you read Jane Austen, she doesn’t explain everything because her readers would understand it. Then you read a Regency novel by a modern author, and they explain everything. It’s cool to do both.

Karissa: Darcy and KyLee, do you have favorite time periods?

Darcy: Medieval is my favorite to read in and write in. Then the Regency era, then the American West. I probably read mostly Westerns. Some people say cowboys are the truest heirs to medieval knights. There are similarities in how unlawful it could feel. There was law in both places, but it only extended so far.

Christie: I watch black and white westerns with my mom. The body count is wild. They’re just shooting people in the street and it’s cool. I would never want to live back then.

KyLee: I overanalyze it too. It’s set in the 1800s, but it was made in the ’40s or ’50s. So I’m thinking about their worldview and ideologies, and how that shaped what they presented.

Christie: They’re pretty racist. Sometimes I’m like, how is this still on TV?

Darcy: Everything we write is a product of our time. It’s just more glaring the further back you go.

KyLee: I started Gone with the Wind. It’s too long for my taste. Some language made me pause.

Karissa: We never see the sins of our own era. Our descendants will look back and see the sins of today.

Darcy: Grace Livingstone Hill wrote in the late 1800s and early 1900s. You see elements of racism and classism, and ideas like bloodline influencing character. Looking through modern eyes, it’s horrible. She’s still one of my favorites because her stories are sweet and encouraging in faith, but you see how even a good person is a product of their time.

KyLee: That’s why it’s important to be kind. I’m not going to stop reading her because I can see flaws. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Karissa: That comes up in English teaching too. How do you teach classics responsibly without canceling them completely?

Karissa: I wanted to talk about books set during wars. We see a lot set with the backdrop of World War II. Do you have a favorite war setting to read about, and any favorite books?

KyLee: I’ve always been drawn to the Civil War. When I was growing up, there were quite a few Civil War movies and books in the Christian genre. The brother against brother aspect pulls me in. As an adult, I look at the events that led up to it and grimace, hoping history doesn’t repeat itself.

More recently, the Franco-Prussian War, partly because some of my ancestors’ sisters came over during that time. It only lasted about a year. France declared it, and France lost. Their people suffered.

Germany demanded huge remunerations in gold. By today’s standards, I did the math before we started, it was about 84 to 95 billion dollars. (FACT CHECK – In today’s purchasing power, estimates for that 5 billion francs generally range between $80 billion and $100 billion USD.) France had promised not to tax people during the war, but afterward they charged back taxes. There was a civil uprising in Paris, and a week-long massacre called the Bloody Week.

That history comes into book one of the Outlaw Heart series. It’s lesser known French history. My people were German, and my characters are French, but I was fascinated by it. You don’t hear about that war as much.

Darcy: That’s obscure for Americans because it didn’t affect us directly, so it doesn’t make it into our history books. But it made a huge difference in Europe.

KyLee: My dad’s side always wrote Prussia on census records, not Germany. That led me to dig into where Prussia was and how that history unfolded.

Karissa: What challenges did you find writing about something so difficult in a way that worked for your story?

KyLee: The main character in book one, Lorraine, lived through the Bloody Week. She’s in America now. I looked at where she is as an immigrant and how she tries to settle when there is nothing left for her in France.

People were rounded up, imprisoned, and shipped off to New Caledonia, a penal colony near Australia, I believe. No trial. Later, there were pardons, but many people were still imprisoned because they were never tried, and their names were never even taken down.

Lorraine is haunted by the past and has post-traumatic stress disorder. She refuses to speak English even though she understands it. She holds tightly to French roots, clothing, and food, and stays close to other French people. Jesse challenges her to put down roots in a country where she feels like an alien.

That Bible phrase kept coming up to me, be kind to the immigrant, the alien, the foreigner. Remember when you were in Egypt and you were a stranger in a strange land.

For research, I relied on as many documents as I could find, plus academic papers written about the Bloody Week and why it happened. I want to respect history and the people who lived it.

Karissa: I love how you included the war because we feel the weight she carries without putting everything on the page in an overly graphic way.

Christie: The Bandit’s Redemption is the first in the series. It has such a pretty cover too.

Darcy: It’s such a good one.

Karissa: Darcy, do you have a favorite war setting?

Darcy: Probably World War II, because it’s so vast. You have the European theater and the Pacific theater, plus the home front in America and Britain. Every time I pick up a World War II book, it’s like, “I did not know that.”

The Civil War is hard for me. I grew up in Georgia, and in some places it feels like it happened this century. It was my country. World War II lets me detach a bit more.

I did read one Civil War book by Rosanna M. White that was fabulous, Dreams of Savannah. It handled the loyalty conflict very gracefully.

Karissa: What makes a good war book?

Christie: Accuracy doesn’t matter much to me because I’m not going to catch mistakes. I want characters and their journeys, battles and close calls, romance, and a happy ending.

Darcy: I appreciate historical facts because I want to be grounded in the setting. But if I’m reading fiction, I’m there for story and characters. I want to see what the war is doing to them, to their society, to their family, and how it changes their lives.

KyLee: I want it at the character level too. I also like seeing people on both sides. I want everyday heroes, and small choices that mattered. I also love surprising historical technology I didn’t know about.

Karissa: Accuracy matters to me, but not at the expense of story. I just want what happens to feel believable for the era. In Regency romances, for example, two people being alone in a room can be a big deal. A kiss behind a barn could ruin lives.

Darcy: Historical characters in books sometimes have a modern disregard for societal pressure, which is inaccurate. We all feel societal pressure today too. It’s just different pressures.

Christie: Karissa, you like reading the Brontës because they wrote in that time. Do they have stolen kisses, or is it different because they were writing then?

Karissa: If it’s Emily and Wuthering Heights, it’s more dramatic and Gothic. With Jane Eyre, I think it’s more bound by the era.

Darcy: If someone did a modern retelling, I think they’d put stolen kisses in.

KyLee: It depends on the character and how they were raised. There were orphanages and homes for widows who were pregnant, and women who had gotten pregnant outside marriage. There are records showing pregnancies starting before marriage dates in some places in the 1700s.

On the whole, the societal expectation mattered. So you need to look at your character. If she’s proper and ladylike, she probably won’t have modern levels of physical intimacy.

Karissa has proofread my stuff and told me, this would never happen. She was right. It pushes you to be creative. Make the little things special too.

Karissa: What might seem small to us might be very steamy to someone in the Regency era. Like touching a hand without a glove.

Darcy: He’ll be proposing within the week.

Christie: I read The Ice Swan by J’nell Ciesielski. That was during the Russian Revolution in 1917. I remember really liking that one.

Darcy: Rosemary Sutcliff does this well in her books about Britain after Rome officially withdrew. It spans generations. The first is The Eagle of the Ninth. It’s technically YA and she wrote in the 1950s or ’60s. Sword at Sunset is an adult book with some adult content. She personalizes the conflict and shows conflicting loyalties, and friendships across cultures. It’s history, not fantasy.

Karissa: Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. Not to be confused with anything else. It’s YA historical set during World War II, but it focuses on Stalin’s reign and deportations to Siberia. It takes place in Lithuania and the Baltic states, where there were multiple occupations. It’s about a girl whose family is sent to a prison camp.

I studied abroad in Lithuania, so that history sticks with me. Ruta Sepetys researches a lot and her books are well done.

Kelly mentioned The Women by Kristin Hannah, set during the Vietnam War.

Darcy: I had someone tell me she read The Women three times because it was so good. It’s on my list. My sister highly recommends Kristin Hannah. She read The Nightingale and said it was worth the pain.

Christie: I need happy ones. I can only do one super tearjerker a year.

KyLee: I borrowed The Dark of the Moon by Fiona Valpy. I’ve read The Dressmaker’s Gift and The Beekeeper’s Promise by her. They’re World War II, like French resistance. Melanie Dobson does this well too, like The Curator’s Daughter, a time slip about a woman married to a Nazi soldier.

I like books that feel sobering, like they changed my life. I also borrowed Angel from the East by Barbara A. Curtis. I borrowed The Winter Rose by Melanie Dobson, a World War II story about a lady who helps rescue Jewish children.

Darcy: I just finished The Bounty Hunter’s Surrender by KyLee Woodley. I had never read it cover to cover. I helped brainstorm, and apparently the villain is my fault. I enjoyed it so much.

I’m also reading a contemporary by Becky Wade, Turn to Me, in her Misty River romance series set in Northeast Georgia. I know exactly what she’s describing.

Christie: I’m reading The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena.

Karissa: I’m listening to the audiobook of Long Bright River by Liz Moore. It’s about a police officer in Philadelphia. Her sister struggles with addiction, then goes missing. There are flashbacks and a modern timeline, plus mysterious murders. I can’t stop listening.

KyLee: You can connect with us at HistoricalBookworm.com. You can find me at KyLeeWoodley.com and Darcy at DarcyFornier.com

Darcy: I’m most active on Instagram, DarcyFornierWriter

Karissa: Thank you for joining us today on our literary journey. If you love the podcast, share it with a friend and rate and review. And don’t forget to follow us on social media at Lit Ladies Pod.

Our quote today is from Barbara Tuchman: “Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled. Thought and speculation are at a standstill.”