David Schaeffer’s book Letters from Sweden (Mercer University Press, 2023) isn’t an ordinary love story. For one thing, it’s told mainly in letters, most of them written by the author’s father, Bill, to his fiancée, Mary. For another, it’s all true. In the book we are invited to read over Mary’s shoulder as she gets to know the man she agreed to marry, after a whirlwind engagement in 1947, as he travels to Sweden to continue preparing for Lutheran ministry.
Living Lutheran caught up with Schaeffer, who has woven these letters together with historical context to bring readers an encouraging, honest look at a relationship and a moment in time.
Living Lutheran: Could you tell us about your book?
Schaeffer: Letters from Sweden is a nonfiction Lutheran love story set in the World War II era. Upon graduating from [the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg, Pa.] after the war, our Purple Heart hero, Bill, gets engaged to Mary, a younger and more pragmatic Lutheran, following a seven-week postwar courtship. But he immediately leaves to study theology in Sweden for over a year.
Letters from Sweden explores how, with God’s help, a couple’s love, commitment, faith and trust can be enhanced by daily, handwritten letters across an ocean of separation. The book also describes Bill’s journey to find his place in the ministry as he explores churches and interacts with preachers, theologians and archbishops throughout Sweden, Norway and Finland, including the Lutheran World Federation’s convention in Lund, Sweden, in the summer of 1947.
How did the idea for this project come about?
After my mother died in 2020, my brother found among her possessions two sets of letters constituting an author’s gold mine of historical information, not only regarding my father’s experience in World War II but about their amazing postwar romance.
The first set was written by my father to a Lutheran friend in Washington, D.C., during his Army training, deployment to Europe, rehabilitation in Scotland and the Allied Occupation in Germany. These letters candidly discuss his dreams and frustrations about relationships with women during wartime and the physical and spiritual challenges he faced as a chaplain’s assistant manning battalion aid stations close to the front lines.
I learned more about my parents by reading these letters than I knew in my 65 years of life.
The second set comprises the daily letters he sent to Mary in 1947 and early 1948 from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Belgium. Through these letters he demonstrated his love and commitment to Mary despite being 3,000 miles away from her, starting with a letter the day after she accepted his sudden proposal of marriage. After reading the letters I knew that I wanted to share this beautiful story with the world, especially fellow Lutherans.
What was the experience of researching, piecing together and writing this very personal story like for you?
I learned more about my parents by reading these letters than I knew in my 65 years of life before my mother died. I knew generally that my father served and was injured in World War II, that he and my mother had a short courtship, and that my father had spent over a year in Sweden back in the day. But my father never talked about the war, and the details of how my parents developed their loving relationship while being separated for over a year [were] unknown to me.
So reading these letters and writing this book was personally enlightening to me, especially since my wife and I had an even shorter courtship before getting engaged after meeting at our Lutheran church in Atlanta.
As part of this project I did extensive research about my parents’ early lives, including the formation of their faiths growing up in Lutheran churches, their college days at Newberry (S.C.) College—at different times—and the various World War II battles in which Bill’s 84th Infantry Division fought. I also researched the places, events, churches and persons Bill met or visited during his sojourn in Sweden and his travels to Norway and Finland, including meeting Lutheran theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Niemöller.
How has writing the book impacted your own faith?
As a Lutheran “preacher’s kid,” I went to church every Sunday and studied Luther’s Small Catechism in confirmation class. At Duke University (Durham, N.C.) I double-majored in economics and religion, seriously considering following in my father’s footsteps. However, after a long talk with my favorite religion professor, I realized that my faith at that time was not quite strong enough to be confident in preaching to others.
Together, they developed five Lutheran churches, all of which survive to this day.
So I became a lawyer, focusing on another type of service: helping people navigate the judicial system during crises and troubled times in their lives. And, on the side, I served as an assisting lay minister at St. Luke Lutheran Church in Atlanta for almost 40 years, during which my faith in God and the church as the body of Christ in this world grew exponentially.
After reading my father’s letters and realizing that he, too, struggled with the decision to become a minister after college, I felt better about having struggled with that decision at the same age. Working through this writing project has only solidified the faith that has grown in my heart over the years. I believe God had a hand in bringing my parents together.
How do you hope readers respond to Letters from Sweden?
I hope people will appreciate the sacrifice and resilience of the “Greatest Generation,” and that generation’s commitment to their love of God, country and family. In [today’s world of] email and text messages I hope this book will inspire people to discover anew the power of old-fashioned, handwritten letters.
I hope this book will provide joy and an example of faith, trust, commitment and steadfast love for every reader. From the responses I have already received, people enjoy not only Bill’s love story, war history and religious journey but also his detailed travelogue during his bike trips all over postwar Scandinavia, as well as the many historical details about life in the immediate postwar era in America and Scandinavia.
[Mary was] an equal partner in his ministry throughout their marriage and kept going for another 18 years after he died. Together, they developed five Lutheran churches, all of which survive to this day.
