But it was when I found out about the Italian Chapel in the wild and remote setting of the Orkney islands that the novel really came to life. I had an idea for a wartime love story, with all its inherent turmoil, conflicts and divided loyalties, and I wanted to place that against the close relationship of two sisters, and the way that both love and war might affect them. As Lea explains, “I always find true stories an inspirational place to start with historical fiction and it was the incredible tale behind the building of the Italian Chapel in Orkney that first appealed to me. The Love Remains: The Metal Heart by Caroline LeaĬaroline Lea admits that The Metal Heart (Harper Perennial, 2021) is, without doubt, “a love story, but this wasn’t necessarily what I set out to write.” The love between the two twin sisters, Dorothy and Constance, and the love between Dorothy and Cesare, the Italian prisoner of war during World War II, “emerged more on each draft … This, perhaps, is what took the longest to tease out: love is such a complicated, multifaceted beast and I wanted the relationships in the novel to be entirely convincing and compelling.”Īlthough the characters in the book are fictional, as is Selkie Holm, the Orkney island where the sisters live, the church built by the Italian prisoners of war in 1943 is based on fact.
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