An Interview About the German-Russian Migration in Marta's Promise

An interview with Jeanne Dennis and Sheila Seifert, authors of Marta’s Promise.

Marta Ebel has nothing left to lose, now that the last member of her family has died. If she gets caught, it could mean death—or the dungeon. It is worth the risk. She fingers the document tucked in the waistband of her skirt. Her guarantee of freedom and a place to call her own—far away in Russia—if only she can escape. If only they would hurry and load the boat before the soldiers come!

So begins Marta Ebel’s pilgrimage to the steppes of the Volga River in 1766, a journey of peril, intrigue, tenderness, courage, and faith.

What made you choose the German States and Russia in the 18th Century as the setting for your novel?

Sheila: I learned about my German Russian heritage when my mother and I researched one line of our family tree in the early 1990s. My great-grandfather, Adam Franzovitch Ebel, emigrated from Russia to the U.S. around 1914, just before World War I. Because records were closed in Russia for most of the last century, it took a lot of work to piece this information together.

Jeanne: Adam Ebel’s ancestors migrated to Russia in the mid-1700s at the invitation of Catherine the Great, who was Russia’s German-born Tsarina. From 1765 to 1768, about thirty thousand German people made the arduous journey across the Baltic Sea and through the Russian wilderness to settle in the southern region of the Volga River.

Sheila: This part of Russian history isn’t well known, and we thought it was time for the story of these German pioneers to be told. We used the surname Ebel to honor my grandfather’s line, but all the characters are fictional.

What made you decide to write this novel together?

Sheila: We had already written six children’s novels together, so it was a natural fit.

Jeanne: Sheila had already done six years’ worth of research, so I felt honored that she was willing to let me help her write the story.

How do two people go about writing a novel together?

Jeanne: People ask me that question all the time. I don’t know how others do it, but Sheila and I set up some rules right from the beginning. First of all, we revised all the writing as if it were our own.

Sheila: And we didn’t go back to old drafts. If one of us changed a passage, we couldn’t go back and copy that part back in. If the co-author wanted to rewrite the passage, that was okay.

Jeanne: And often it would still get deleted. At times it wasn’t easy, especially when Sheila deleted writing I was especially proud of or I deleted something she liked. But when we did the rewrites or changed the scenes, they were always better.

Sheila: I agree. We had to decide not to get too attached to what we wrote. We also took turns writing drafts of chapters. If I wrote the first draft, Jeanne would do the second, and vice versa. We each wrote about half of the first drafts for the twenty-four chapters.

Jeanne: We found that it took about seven drafts before we reached our united voice, which was necessary, because we also write alone.

Sheila: We had to make sure our distinct voices didn’t come through.

Jeanne: After that, it took about two or three more drafts to polish it.

What was the most intriguing piece of history that you came across as you researched Marta’s Promise?

Jeanne: For me it was the way these pioneers survived, both on the journey and once they arrived on the steppes of the Volga River. They must have been a courageous, determined people. I also enjoyed learning about izbas, the Russian peasant homes.

Sheila: I find the entire German Russian story fascinating. As a whole, once the German people settled in the southern Volga area, they lived in Russia, but they were able to remain small German communities, closed to the rest of the world.

Jeanne: The Russian government at that time exempted the Germans from military service and allowed them to retain their language, faith, and culture. Later, though, it was a different story.

Sheila: One we hope to tell someday. We look forward to writing about the changes that took place in the German Russian culture at the end of the 1800s and then in the early 1900s under Stalin.


Jeanne: But those are stories for another day.


Sheila: We hope you enjoy Marta’s Promise. We had fun writing it.

For more information about the authors and Marta's Promise, click here.