Click to visit author's site

Linda Lee Chaikin was born the youngest of ten children. Her father died when she was five months old, leaving her mother with eight young children and very little income.


Linda suffered with asthma throughout childhood which caused her to miss weeks of schooling each semester, spending much of her grade school years alone. Though her family lacked material things,  her mother provided her with plenty of love and books to read. No matter how skimpy the budget, she always managed to scrape together enough change to buy her the Little Golden Books she  loved so much. She would usually buy them at the drugstore on the way home from seeing the doctor. “I’d lie in bed and read and reread those little books, and my imagination would come alive. I especially recall the thrill of receiving a large book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales one Christmas. These books became the friends that I didn’t have the opportunity to make at school. Though I was behind in subjects like math that required sequential learning, I excelled in reading, writing, and spelling. One of my proudest moments was when the teacher moved me up to the highest reading circle in my class.”



Out of these experiences Linda  has seen Romans 8:28 fulfilled in her life as God has worked all things together to good. God has used some of her limitations to prepare her to be a storyteller.


During her  teenage years,  she  began rewriting the endings to novels because she  was dissatisfied with them. She also noticed that when she  received essays and short story assignments her  teachers would often read her work aloud to the class. This reinforced Linda’s  desire to write. At age fourteen she  wrote her first full-length novel using a pen and a pad of paper. “I was actually like Jo in little women who always had ink stains on her fingers,” she says. Later, one of her seven brothers bought her a typewriter. In those days Linda says she  could write anywhere,
even in a full room of people with the television blaring.


“I sent off my novel to a New York publishing house, convinced it would be another Gone With the Wind. What a heartbreak to receive the manuscript back with a rejection slip. (That novel, rewritten years later, was released under the title, Wednesday’s Child in the Day to Remember series.)


Still, Linda’s  driving ambition was to become a published author, so  she began writing a romance novel that contained things that could corrupt the minds of readers. One day at noon as she  was in the middle of writing her secular romance, her  mother turned on the radio, and the late Dr. J. Vernon. McGee’s voice came across clearly.


“What’s keeping you, my friend, from yielding your entire life to the Lord. What are you holding onto that is keeping you from God? Is there anything in your life that means more to you than knowing Jesus Christ?


“I knew that the Lord was using  Dr. McGee’s  verse by verse study of the  book of Leviticus to speak directly to me. I knew exactly what my idol was–the ambition that I would not surrender  because I felt that if I could not write, I could not be happy. After the radio program I paced the room for  an hour with the half-finished manuscript in my arms. One would have thought it was a bar of gold, but in reality, it was wood, hay, and stubble.


At that time, Christian publishers were not publishing fiction, and most secular publishers did not accept stories with “overt” Christian themes. It seemed that you either wrote to feed the old nature, or you didn’t write at all. I knew I was being asked to make a clean break, whatever the cost, even if it meant I’d never write and sell my work. I finally walked over to the trash can and dumped the whole manuscript into it. I knew that if I kept it in the closet I’d be tempted to go back to it once something went wrong in my life that brought discouragement.


I did not write again for many years.  I studied the Bible and  worked as Jr. High girl’s youth sponsor in my church. At that time the mother of one of my Jr. High girls worked in the same company as my future husband,  Steve. Since he attended the company lunch Bible studies, she spoke  to him about the girl named Linda that worked with her daughter. When he came to my church singles group he entered the room about five minutes late and sat down right beside me. We were married six months later. I had the special privilege of teaching neighborhood Bible classes for teens and children in our home for about twelve years. I was content in God’s will and forgot all about writing novels and didn’t miss it at all.”


One day Steve brought  Linda  some books by C. S. Lewis.  She  was deeply impressed with the clear demonstration of good and evil in his novels. “It was as though the Lord was showing me that there were ways to write fiction that would honor Him. Soon afterward  Steve and I were accepted at Multnomah SchooI of the Bible in Portland, Oregon where we completed the one year Grad course. “Returning to California,  Linda began writing (in longhand) a huge fantasy trilogy, and when  Steve started reading it he became interested in the characters and would forget that it was his wife who wrote it. Impressed with his wife’s talent, he bought her a new early model IBM PC (with no hard drive!) and a word processor program to encourage her.  Since Linda liked history, she began writing historical fiction that dealt with the struggles and testings of Christians living in dark times. After receiving many rejections,  her first book was published in 1990. ‘I was thrilled that the Lord had given my writing back to me. Since then I’ve written over thirty books, so I’ve made up for lost time!


Linda believes that God has called her to write. ‘Edifying the Bride of Christ is my goal. I prayerfully consider what He wants me to say in each book. I research my choice of historical backgrounds and include main characters that respond to solid Biblical principles in a mostly hostile world. I want the reader to take away something that goes beyond being exposed to an interesting story that sells. My life verse is Jeremiah 29:11. God knows His good plans for each of us, and that should allow each of us to pillow our head at night with peace and contentment.”