Patricia Raybon Interview

Today I am pleased to welcome author Patrician Raybon to Interviews & Reviews. Patricia is a Colorado author and essayist who writes daring and exciting historical mystery and suspense novels at the intersection of faith, race, and grace. Her devotional writing appears in Our Daily Bread, where she’s a regular contributor. She has won both the Christy Award and the Christianity Today Book Award for fiction.

Her new novel, The Sedalia Code, was inspired by her parents’ wartime romance and the plot of a Nazi attack on US soil. Patricia’s father was a young lieutenant stationed at Camp Butner in North Carolina when he met Patricia’s mother, who was born and raised near the renowned Palmer Memorial Institute, a prep school for sons and daughters of Black Americans, many prominent and wealthy.

Today, she'll discuss her new book The Sedalia Code, and Tyndale Fiction will give a free copy to a lucky U.S. resident!

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Patricia, welcome to I & R!

Can you tell us how you came up with the idea for The Sedalia Code? Was there a particular moment or experience in your life that inspired you to write this book?

Two life events inspired my story: my parents’ wartime romance in North Carolina in 1943 and my mom’s working-class fascination with a prestigious Black prep school in Sedalia, a short hour from her home in Durham, the tobacco town. Both elements got my juices
flowing. My dad, a young lieutenant, was stationed at segregated Camp Butner, a sprawling US Army camp where 35,000 US soldiers were stationed and thousands of German and Italian POWs were held, almost everybody’s emotions on high. Could I turn these WWII tensions into a story? That’s where I started.

That sounds exciting! What special messages, themes, or symbols are included in The Sedalia Code? Why are they important to you and to the book’s story?

At its heart, The Sedalia Code is about love and bravery during the pressures of war when life is pounding back. For a poor math teacher like my character Laurette Lowe and her love interest, Lt. Nev Pierce, the struggle to decode life and conflict in a culture that says you don’t count meant rethinking all they knew—spiritually and personally—especially while fighting a deadly Nazi threat. So, how would Laurette and Nev unravel family hurt, romantic love, and the codes of secret Nazi messages while daring to love the God they hoped loved them back, all during the crucible of war? Those were questions I wanted to explore.

Do you have a favorite character in The Sedalia Code? 

My young math teacher, Laurette Lowe, knows life’s calculations don’t always add up, but she’s relentless, reworking every code and formula until she nails down what proves right. So, early in the story, when a snooty young teacher at a prominent prep school sets a cruel trap to take her down, Laurette could throw in the towel and leave. Instead, lying on a bare mattress in her tiny dorm room, she declares to herself, I’m staying. She’d grown up poor and colored in an ugly time and town, in a shotgun house with an unloving mother, a missing father, and a sharecropper grandpa out in the country, too far to help. Still, nothing would send her running. I loved that about her. She inspired me start to finish.

Does a particular scene stand out in your mind as very memorable? If so, briefly explain what happens and why it resonates so much with you.

Near the end of the story Laurette is faced with forgiving her mother, her lifetime nemesis who’s now dying. They’re on a long-distance phone call and Laurette ignores the dying woman’s cutting words and put-downs. She now understands her mother didn’t love her
well because the woman hadn’t been loved well herself. Laurette refuses to hold it against her any longer. War has taught her that holding grudges costs too much. Even a bruised heart can forgive. I adore these realizations for Laurette. Writing them taught me that
people who hurt us, even family members, can be absolved of their faults. Then we heal, too.

Was there a specific Scripture passage or spiritual theme that guided you while you were writing The Sedalia Code?

The Book of Jeremiah shined like a lighthouse when the prophet praised God for his counsel and might, saying, “Ah Lord God! . . . there is nothing too hard for thee” (Jeremiah 32:17, KJV). I’d heard that exaltation in a Sunday school class at my church not long after my husband of 49 years passed while I was halfway through writing the novel. I seized on its promise that God’s wisdom and power are without limit. My character Laurette needed to grasp that uplift, too. A Nazi would try to kill her in this story. She needed to know God’s
might. The words also kept me writing. They inspire me to this day.

Who do you think will most enjoy this book, and what do you hope readers will remember long after they’ve finished reading it?

Fans of historical fiction are already reaching out: “I can’t wait!” I’m also hearing from people whose loved ones were World War II veterans or have other connections to the war and are eager to read Laurette’s story. As we know, everyday people became heroes
during that war and they still inspire. Just today, I saw a Goodreads review saying, “I was completely drawn into Laurette’s journey and found myself cheering her on every step of the way.” The war still renders inspiration, suspense, rich personal growth, and riveting
surprises, even 80-plus years later. For those reasons and more, I’m thrilled to share this story.

The best fiction leaves readers with both a memorable story and a broader understanding of the world in which we live. What real-life themes or topics will readers find in The Sedalia Code, and why was it important for them to be included?

Amid the suspense of their story, Laurette and Nev are tested by real-life social issues that some people now say don’t touch. White supremacy, segregation, the demeaning degradation of Jim Crow rules and tensions. Such issues were pervasive during my novel’s
time and decades beyond. The novel isn’t only about these things, however, or about family betrayal, self-acceptance, or hurt—also in the plot. What matters most is what fictional characters teach us about dealing with such tests today. In our divided times, we too can
find the courage and strength to unravel life’s toughest problems. Then we arrive at answers that can heal and change our world.

Thank you for sharing, Patricia. If you are a U.S. resident you can enter to win a copy of this novel. Just fill out the form below! The winner will be announced here and via email. This giveaway runs until  August 16, 2026.

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Congratulations to Kimberlee S., you have won a print copy of The Sedalia Code! Watch for our email!

A courageous young woman struggles to rise above her dirt-poor beginnings and outsmart a Nazi threat on U.S. soil during WWII in this thrilling Southern tale of bravery, love, and forgiveness.

Sedalia, North Carolina, 1943. While war rages overseas, Laurette Lowe faces a more personal battle when she lands a job teaching math at La Porte Academy, a prestigious Black finishing school. Determined to rise above her sharecropping roots, deep family hurt, and the suffocating limits of Jim Crow, Laurette quickly learns that survival and success demand constant vigilance, carefully measuring every step and word to earn her place among the social elite.

A chance encounter with Nev Pierce, a handsome Army lieutenant from nearby Camp Butner, threatens to derail her plans. Though she first dismisses him as an unwelcome distraction, she’s drawn in by his request to decipher a cryptic message passed to him by an Italian POW. What begins as an intellectual puzzle becomes a chilling revelation: details of a Nazi plot to assassinate the U.S. president.

Cracking the cipher, however, only brings a more troubling puzzle. Army officials at the segregated base are unlikely to heed a Black schoolteacher’s warning and Nev could land in serious trouble for involving an unauthorized civilian. With time running out, Laurette and Nev enlist a small circle of allies from the school in a cunning and courageous ploy, boldly risking their futures and lives to stop a deadly threat no one else sees coming.

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