Midwestern girl Elena Gattino has just arrived in Rome after a series of devastating events demolished the life she thought God had planned for her. Benedikt Rechsteiner is a Swiss Guard whose term is drawing to a close and who needs to start figuring out what’s next. What starts with a chance meeting turns into more when the two end up working together to organize a charitable gala in Vatican City. In each other, they find more than a friend, and their story is elegant and funny, chaste and adventurous. It’s all the food and flirting you love in a romance novel, with the addition of a generous and long-legged pope, dashes of multiple languages, and a side order of espionage.
“Love in the Eternal City: A Swiss Guard Romance” is Rebecca W. Martin’s debut novel, but it’s not her first publication. She’s the author of two picture books, the award-winning “Meet Sister Mary Margaret” and the forthcoming “Father Drew, What Do You Do?” Rebecca works by day as acquisitions editor for Our Sunday Visitor, assistant editor for Chrism Press and editor for the Lay Dominicans of the Province of St. Albert the Great.
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She spent some time sharing more about her novel with me.
Tackling difficult topics
Radiant: “Love in the Eternal City” is a delight, in part because it has elements of a sweet and dreamy romance, and in part because it tackles some serious subject matter — like relationship abuse, depression and other mental illnesses — with compassion and grace. How did you manage balancing what you might call the lighter and heavier aspects of this story?
Rebecca W. Martin: That would be the magic of genre convention! A contemporary romance, whether novel or movie, has certain “beats” that it has to hit in order to fulfill the reader’s expectations. It’s the reason Hallmark movies get mocked, but we still enjoy them. When we know, in a sense, what to expect, we’re able to sit back and delight in what makes this movie or this book different. All that to say, I crossed the conventions of contemporary romance with a little romantic thriller, and following those patterns helped me be able to go deep with the dark stuff but keep it from taking over the fun, adventurous, joyful parts.
Radiant: You share in the acknowledgements that many of the details about Rome came from your own experience studying there and that married friends with a similar story helped you to layer accurate details into Benedikt and Elena’s adventure. Did fact or fiction lead you into this story, and how did one play off the other as you wrote?
Rebecca: Truth be told, I started writing “Love in the Eternal City” as a personal challenge. I bet myself I could write just as good a contemporary romance as all the ones I was reading at the time. I thought “Huh, what’s a good setting?” and my brain said “Rome! Rome is always awesome!” And the story just … started coming. Fact and fiction started weaving themselves together into what is now basically my love letter to Rome.
I pulled from memories of student life in Rome for the setting and experiences of the characters; allowed Elena to work through her mental health alongside me as I tackled my own; and for the icing on the cake brought in the Widmers (former Swiss Guard and his wife) to make sure that the portrayal of Swiss Guard life was as accurate as it could be!
Radiant: In their own ways, both Benedikt and Elena struggle with feeling not good enough. What was it like to explore that experience from both a male and a female point of view?
Rebecca: I began to realize that the feeling of not good enough is a viscerally human experience, even though it plays out differently in men and women. It’s the message of the serpent in Eden, after all: “You’re not good enough, but you might be good enough if you eat this fruit.” In our broken hearts we’re still trying to prove ourselves somehow. I know the female side of this well, of course! Elena’s insecurity mirrors my own experience and that of my friends. Beni’s experience is pulled not only from my knowledge of the men in my life, but also from Christian anthropology, where we see that men are more likely to be insecure in the very desires God has given them, such as the drive to serve, protect and care for others.
Challenge of chastity in dating
Radiant: Benedikt and Elena are acutely aware of a line in physical intimacy they don’t want to cross, yet each is also honest in his or her own thoughts about the desire for more, the combination of which I found refreshing and affirming. Do you think this approach to the power of touch in a new relationship is more common than the contemporary conversation about hook-up culture would have us believe, or do you think Beni and Elena are an exception to the rule?
Rebecca: Ha. Nope, Beni and Elena are far from the exception! This is something that’s important for me to talk about, because in many cases for those of us who were somewhat sheltered (for lack of a better word) in our childhood and teen years, the power of romantic physical touch comes as a huge shock when we first start dating. We’re not prepared for how quickly passion can override our good intentions, and each couple has to figure out for themselves what the boundaries of virtue are. And of course we have our culture telling us not to worry about boundaries at all! But we’re body-soul composites, and God made our bodies to connect just as much as he made our souls to connect. So we have to navigate the difficulties of physical touch in a broken world. That’s part and parcel of a developing relationship. I hope that Beni and Elena’s experience can be a little illustration of how we can do that well — honestly, I don’t think it would have been a true love story without that element. (And we haven’t even talked about how much harder this gets when pornography is involved. Stay tuned for Book 2 … yes, this is the first of a trilogy!)
New opportunity as a writer
Radiant: How did your profession as a Lay Dominican play into the writing of this novel? And did working as a writer, rather than as an editor, draw you to the Lord in a different way?
Rebecca: As a Lay Dominican, my vocation is preaching the truth. Before this novel’s inception, I’d assumed my job as an editor would be the extent of my preaching — helping others’ messages of truth reach the world in the best way possible! But as I began writing, the Lord drew me more fully into preaching through storytelling, which I’ve always believed in but never thought was my role. Now that I’m the one actually doing that storytelling, I had to claim a new facet of my Lay Dominican vocation, and the Lord invited me into humility through that. I had to come to terms with the fact that I’m an experienced editor, but a novice writer, and I still have so much to learn. In the end, I sort of threw the story at the Lord and said, “It’s yours, tell me what you want me to do with it.” He’s continuing to draw me deeper into this new creative vocation, and I’m excited to see where it goes.
