Celebrate Lit / April 5, 2025

When the Sky Burned

About the Book When the Sky Burned

Book: When the Sky Burned (A Day to Remember Book 6)

Author: Liz Tolsma

Genre: Christian Fiction / Romance / Historical Fiction

Release date: March 1, 2025

A Tornado of Fire and Embezzlement Sweep through a Community

Enjoy a series of 6 exciting novels featuring historic disasters that transformed landscapes and multiple lives. Whether by nature or by man, these disasters changed history and were a day to be remembered.

Promising painter Mariah Randolph longs to have her canvases displayed in the world’s best museums, and Hollis Stanford, the heir of a railroad tycoon, is her ticket to success. The railroad’s bookkeeper, Jay Franklin, discovers discrepancies and is convinced that Hollis is stealing from the company. But any proof of his dirty dealings go up in smoke when fire utterly destroys the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, on October 8, 1871.

The fire leaves Mariah blind, but Jay befriends her and even helps her to start painting again. But a trip to Chicago to return Hollis’s daughter to him could put both Mariah and Jay in more danger than even the fire that devastated the town and their lives.

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My Thoughts on When the Sky Burned

When the Sky Burned is a wonderful historical fiction novel that you’re going to want to read. It’s also the sixth book in a series. This series is amazing and on natural disasters. It focuses on the people of the time and what they might have gone through. You’ll get a feel for the devastation but also for what the people might have felt and gone through.

I loved getting to know Mariah. But I was never a fan of her fiancé. He just seemed too smooth or too perfect. And then his facade starts to slip. And the way he treats his daughter. Not cool.

You’re going to love this novel. It has suspense and it has romance. It has devastation but also hope. I loved getting to learn about a disaster that I had actually never heard of. Reading this novel had me researching and learning a lot more.

Oh, and I could literally see the paintings of Mariah. They’re so neat. And the way they were described helped me to be able to see them. The characters were also described in such a way that I really felt that I knew them. There are a few that I felt like shaking but most were wonderful and actually surprised you with how they rise up and tackle the disaster.

Definitely one that I recommend reading! The whole series is amazing and should be read actually.

I have voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this boo,k which I received from Celebrate Lit. All views expressed are only my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC regulations.

About the Author of When the Sky Burned

Liz Tolsma is the author of several WWII novels, romantic suspense novels, prairie romance novellas, and an Amish romance. She is a popular speaker and an editor and resides next to a Wisconsin farm field with her husband and their youngest daughter. Her son is a US Marine, and her oldest daughter is a college student. Liz enjoys reading, walking, working in her large perennial garden, kayaking, and camping. She is also the host of the Christian Historical Fiction Talk podcast.

More from Liz

I stared at my computer screen in front of me. For years, I had been searching for my great-grandmother, Anna. I got no good information. Census records in the US weren’t helpful. Some listed her birthplace as Czechoslovakia, while others had it as Austria. I had heard before that she might have been born in Czechoslovakia before, but never Austria. There were no records that I had come across that listed the city or town where she was born.

Until that one day, while searching for my great-grandmother, I ran across a passport application recorded in Warsaw, Poland, for an Anna with the same last name, though spelled differently. Her birthday was listed as 1903, which matched the birth year I knew for my great-grandmother’s niece. As I read through the application, my heart was pounding. Anna was born in the United States but went to Dubne, Poland, with her family in 1906.

It was now 1923, and she wanted to return to the US, and she would be living with…

I started to cry when I saw who her sponsor was.

My great-grandfather. The name and address were correct. There could be no doubt about it. It had taken me years, but I finally made the jump to Europe and discovered that my great-grandmother was not born in Czechoslovakia but in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now Poland.

Of course, good little researcher that I am, I had to find out all I could about Dubne, the town they were from. That’s when I first came across the term Lemko. What on earth was that?

Lemkos are a Slavic people that settled in the Carpathian Mountains of Southern Poland, Northern Slovakia, and Western Ukraine. They are also known as Lemko Rusyns, Rusyns (especially those born in Slovakia, like my great-grandfather), and Carptho-Rusyns. The mountains kept the world at bay, and they developed their own language, customs, and form of Christianity. For the most part, they were very poor, many of them eking out a living from the rocky ground.

They lived in “black houses,” called that because the poorest people couldn’t afford to have a chimney built. The smoke from the cooking and heating fires stayed inside the house and covered the walls with black tar. If you look at the cemetery records from Dubne, you would be old if you lived into your fifties. Conditions were brutal.

The most the average Lemko could afford was one sheep or one pig.

Since this was their most prized possession, they couldn’t take the chance of a wild animal or a neighbor taking it away, so it lived in the house with them.

With all of them.

Up to eleven people would live in a two-room house. When I mentioned that in What I Left for You, my editor questioned if I had made a mistake. No, I didn’t. I have no idea how they fit all those people in there, but they did. As I was tracking one branch of our family tree, I kept coming up with people living in house 43. Over and over and over. They stuffed that house full. Grandparents, parents, and children all lived together. They may not have had much, but that forged the Lemkos into strong and resilient people.

I’m proud to be Lemko-Rusyn, and I’m thrilled to share this story with you. I infused Helena, the historical heroine, with as much of the Lemko spunk and spirit as I could. Last October, my daughter and I had the privilege to travel to Poland and Slovakia and see the Lemko homeland for ourselves. It helped me to write a better, richer story because I now understand where they came from and who they were. Enjoy Helena’s story and her journey during WWII and beyond. I hope you come to understand and appreciate the Lemko people as much as I have.