About the Book
Book: The Last Quiet Autumn
Author: Loni Kemper Moore
Genre: Christian historical fiction with strong faith themes
Release Date: September, 2025
One letter stitched a family together. Now, with war on the wind, only love—penned note by note—holds the threads in place.
Autumn 1941
Three young women—strangers to one another—each receive an alluring invitation they cannot and dare not refuse—Thanksgiving dinner in Texas with a mysterious ninety-year-old woman.
Virginia Campbell, a poised Boston socialite on the brink of marrying into a powerful political family, is entrusted with a delicate family mission—one that could jeopardize the perfect wedded life she so carefully planned.
Eulalia Bell, a spirited nursing graduate, earned her scholarship in Nebraska thanks to the Orphan Train. But the truth of her past threatens the career she’s fought hard to build.
Francesca Smythe, a resilient wife and mother on an Oklahoma ranch, survived the Dust Bowl and Depression. She longs for the warmth and connection of a true family. When the letter arrives, she wonders if it holds the key to the belonging she’s yearned for all her life.
As secrets unfold and pasts entwine, these three women are drawn to a truth that will reshape their lives—about love powerful enough to face a potential world at war, desires too strong to be silenced, and the courage to claim their place in history.
Click here to get your copy!
About the Author
Loni Kemper Moore is a sports-cheering, Diet-Pepsi-sipping, Rocky Mountain–adventure-seeking storyteller who longs to reflect God’s beautiful love through life’s hardest places, especially for remarkable women around the globe.
A preacher’s kid at heart though her father joined her mother in Heaven, Loni’s wanderlust was sparked early by family and missionary stories. She has visited more than a dozen countries, learning from other cultures while often experiencing life as “the other.” Though she attended multiple schools as a minority and later discovered African heritage through DNA testing, she approaches those experiences with humility rather than assumption.
Loni earned bachelor’s degrees in Education and Biblical Studies from the former Denver Baptist Bible College and completed graduate work in Education at the University of Evansville.
A Jesus-following history enthusiast, Loni was named Leonnie Sue after generations of strong women. Leonnie was her maternal great-grandmother, who died during the Influenza Pandemic, leaving behind her husband and four teenagers. Sue traces through the family tree to Susanna Dean, who stepped off a ship in Korea, Maine, in the 1640s. These inherited collections of more than 500 spoons; stories of faith, endurance, and love deeply shape Loni’s writing.
Her novel The Last Quiet Autumn came to life after cousin reunions on both sides of her family stirred memories of childhood gatherings at her grandparents’ homes—one on a Loudoun County, Virginia farm and the other on a southern Colorado ranch. Reflecting on shared family experiences and her parents’ childhood just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Loni began to wonder how different her life might have been without nearly two dozen cousins spread across four time zones. That question sparked a story that grew far beyond her original imagination.
When she isn’t writing, Loni is visiting friends, studying history, and exploring meaningful places—like the Cherwell River near Oxford, UK where J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis once walked. During a trip to Swindon, England, she visited the Eagle and Child pub, where the Inklings met, a moment that proved especially encouraging.
Loni is the proud mom of Adam, a CAD engineer and YouTuber; Becca and Anthony, who made her a delighted grandmother of her “GrandMiracles,” Naomie and Zemira; and a frequent traveler with her beloved “Hugsband,” Robert, an embedded engineer. A granddaughter of ranchers and farmers, Loni holds close the legacy of trusting God through tragedy—faith that carried her grandparents and parents through the World Wars and continues to anchor her stories today.
More from Loni
I can still picture my grandmother standing at her farmhouse stove, cracking open precious eggs she’d just sold back to herself. The surplus eggs were sold to allow her to buy rationed products.
One recipe she made regularly was this ‘Wacky Cake’—a chocolate cake so frugal it needed no eggs, butter, or milk. While historians debate the exact origin of the name, the most likely explanation is that it earned its playful moniker from the unconventional method of mixing everything directly in the baking pan—no bowl required. Homemakers could hardly believe a cake without eggs or butter would actually rise and taste good. But it does!
As a child spoiled by Betty Crocker mixes, I had to admire her ingenuity, even if I couldn’t quite share her enthusiasm for the taste. When my character Chessa bakes in ‘The Last Quiet Autumn,’ I drew directly from recipes like this one. Understanding how women stretched ingredients during wartime rationing helped me write scenes that felt authentic.
Have you tried Depression-era recipes? I’d love to hear about your family’s resourceful traditions from that era.
It reminded me how faith, like that cake, often rises when we least expect it to.
Wacky Chocolate Cake
(a.k.a. Depression Cake or Crazy Cake)
Circa 1940s
Ingredients:
- 1½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon vinegar (white or apple cider)
- ⅓ cup + 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 cup cold water
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350°F
- In an ungreased 8×8-inch square baking pan, sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.
- Make three wells in the dry mixture:
o In one well, pour the vanilla.
o In the second, the vinegar.
o In the third, the oil.
- Pour the cold water over everything and mix well with a fork or whisk until smooth.
- Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Let cool in the pan. Dust with powdered sugar or enjoy plain.
Interview with the Author
- What literary pilgrimages have you gone on? (since I feel like I answered this on one of the previous blog tours, I should expand it.)
A Literary Life: Or How I Accidentally Became a Book Nerd on Road Trips
- My mother attended Colorado State Teachers College a decade after James Michener packed up his gradebook and moved on — probably to research one of his 1,000-page epics. Whenever we made road trips to Greeley, Colorado, where she and my dad met (presumably between chapters), we’d see the tributes to that prolific man who apparently believed no story worth telling could be told in under 900 pages.
- Across the Atlantic, I made it to Winchester Cathedral, where Jane Austen is buried — because apparently even in death she attracts admirers. She wrote Pride and Prejudice among others, survived being a preacher’s daughter, and somehow ended up interred near kings and other VIPs. Nathaniel Hawthorne once famously fumed that America was overrun by a ‘d***d mob of scribbling women’ — though since Austen was British and buried a century earlier, she probably escaped his radar. Small mercies. Either way, Jane had the last laugh: she’s buried in a cathedral, and her admirers still make the trip.
- When my husband landed a project in Atlanta with Coca-Cola, I did what any supportive spouse does — I immediately abandoned him to his Freestyle machine programs and testing and went hunting for Margaret Mitchell sites. The woman wrote Gone with the Wind and frankly, I wasn’t going to let a corporate campus stand between me and literary history.
- Near our Colorado Springs home,
- I’ve visited numerous spots honoring Katharine Lee Bates, who climbed Pikes Peak once, looked around, and apparently thought, “You know what? Song.” And thus “America the Beautiful” was born at altitude. Honestly, many of us just get a headache up there. It is worth visiting the new Summit Center when you drink lots of water!
- Focus on the Family’s campus also houses the work of James Dobson, who mentored a generation of Christian authors — making it a legitimate literary landmark hiding in plain I know this campus well. I spent considerable time there during our children’s birthdays, making radio programs and when we needed to get out of the house during Colorado snowstorms, herding small humans through the indoor play area while apparently never once thinking to ask about the publishing department. Baking with a four-year-old: part recipe, part chaos theory.
- Jerry Jenkins is another Colorado Springs author hero. My funniest story was when a friend and I started a writers group which we invited his students who lived in his area. For whatever reason, she and I waited a few minutes before anyone came and it was, Jerry Jenkins, himself. He was so gracious and brought a new writing to read as if he was a normal person. Although we’ve bumped into him at restaurants and theaters in town, that was most fun!
- Then there’s my most unconventional literary brush. While recenty working as a Technical Support Engineer, I received a routine call from a woman who used our software at the Miami Herald — which just happens to be the professional home of humor columnist Dave Barry, fellow preacher’s kid and national treasure. I did not visit his office. I did not meet him. Technically, I was just doing IT support. But she sent me autographed copies of some of his books, and I hung up that phone feeling like I had completed a grand literary tour — one help ticket at a time.
- What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?
My favorite is the first book I ever published — and the one I had to fight to reclaim. When my original publisher passed away unexpectedly, I discovered I didn’t even own my own story. Apparently, neither grief nor publishing contracts come with a sympathy clause. Republishing Hope Travels Through in 2023 felt less like a business decision and more like showing up at the lost and found — receipts in hand.
It follows a 1970s flight attendant — back when air travel was glamorous, the rules were looser, and passengers weren’t expected to perform an Olympic sprint to their gate. Tierra was never meant to stay grounded. She carries the thread of everything I’m writing next, which meant she had to come home — and honestly, after everything it took to get her back, she’d better.
- How do you select the names of your characters? Usually—silly as it sounds—my characters introduce themselves before I’ve even outlined the plot. They just show up with a name and an opinion, and apparently I work for them.
Their names don’t always belong to anyone I know… although, oddly enough, they often resemble former students, distant cousins, or someone I once sat behind in church. I promise I’m not stealing identities. I prefer to think the names are simply floating around in my memory, waiting for fictional employment.
At this point, I’ve stopped arguing. If a character insists she’s a “Margaret” and not a “Susan,” who am I to interfere? I just nod and start typing.
- What was your hardest scene to write?
In Faith Lights a Flame, my heroine confesses that she was attacked by a boy from her class as she walked home from a Billy Sunday tent revival they had both attended. The irony of that setting was not lost on me — nor on her. The incident becomes a hinge in her story, quietly turning everything that follows.
I did not want the moment to feel sensational or gratuitous. It needed to be honest — faithful to the raw anger and unraveled grief she carried after her mother’s death in the influenza pandemic. Grounding the scene in her grief rather than the violence itself was the only way to keep it from becoming spectacle.
But even in that darkness, I left a door open. She does not emerge healed — healing would be dishonest. She emerges moving, which is something different. A story may pass through violence, but it must not live there. What follows the incident is quieter than what preceded it, and more hard-won: small acts of trust she extends like a hand she is not sure anyone will take.
- If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do? When I was a freshman in college — technically an adult, but barely — one of the girls on my cheerleading team was the daughter of a senior writer for a well-known Christian publisher. I could have asked for an introduction. I should have asked for an introduction. I absolutely did not ask for an introduction. Why? Imposter syndrome was louder than my pom-poms.
Blog Stops
The Avid Reader, April 9
Stories By Gina, April 10 (Author Interview)
Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, April 11
Simple Harvest Reads, April 12 (Author Interview)
A Simple Texas Girl, April 12
Texas Book-aholic, April 13
Artistic Nobody, April 14 (Author Interview)
For Him and My Family, April 15
Guild Master, April 16 (Author Interview)
Life on Chickadee Lane, April 17
Fiction Book Lover, April 18 (Author Interview)
Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, April 19
Vicky Sluiter, April 20 (Author Interview)
Pause for Tales, April 20
Lily’s Corner, April 21
For the Love of Literature, April 22 (Author Interview)
Giveaway
To celebrate her tour, Loni is giving away the grand prize of a $50 Amazon Gift Card and a copy of the book!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.
https://gleam.io/3bY3w/the-last-quiet-autumn-celebration-tour-giveaway