By Renee Struthers

For Go! Magazine

What are the foundations of what makes us who we are? Suanne Laqueur explores the importance of family, love and honor in her latest book “A Small Hotel,” a story of the Fiskare family during World War II.

Ensconced in the tourist town of Clayton, New York, along the St. Lawrence River, the Fiskare family has run a hotel catering to the tourist crowd since 1895. As Swedish immigrants, the family has plied the river, first as fishermen and then as river guides and hospitality. As World War II threatens to envelop the world, a visit from the housekeeper’s distant cousin changes everything for eldest son Kennet. Her stay challenges everything he knew about love and honor — and loss.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor draws the three eldest Fiskare boys into the war, where a different kind of love blooms: camaraderie and brotherhood quite unlike the one he grew up with. The choices Kennet makes, first on the battlefield and then in an Austrian concentration camp, shake his being to the core. With his former self buried in the Belgian countryside, Kennet returns to find his family much changed.

A second chance at love, and honor, and family waits for him. Can Kennet Fiskare rise to the challenge? Do our experiences change the very structure of ourselves, or is the core immutable? Does love in its many forms trump all?

Laqueur’s romance fiction (or “therapy fiction,” as some of her fans call it) twines together personal stories with well-researched historical vignettes to create a world you can’t help but get caught up in. Her characters step out of the pages to challenge the reader’s preconceptions of key themes without relying on cliched romance novel tropes — a story with depth and breadth as well as emotion and scope.

Suanne Laqueur is the author of prize-winning novels “An Exaltation of Larks,” part one of the Venery series, and “Give Me Your Answer True,” the first book of The Fish Tales series, in addition to her current novel and a book of short stories. They can be found on her website, http://suannelaqueurwrites.com.