About the author
Christopher Vandaele
Christopher Vandaele was born in Bruges, Belgium, a city where history is part of daily life, and later made the United States his home. He lives in Palm Beach, Florida, with his family and advises companies as a strategic consultant and founder of Langholm Partners. Outside his work, he mentors young people as a Congressional Award advisor and Scouting America merit badge counselor and coaches youth fencing.
Early in his career, Vandaele served on military missions in Rwanda, Congo, and Somalia. There he saw what war does to children: the fear, the pain, the loss, and the way young people are pulled into conflicts they never chose. Those memories stayed with him. In The Boy Who Lit the Flame, his first novel, they became the voices of Christopher Seider, his sister Anna, and Isaac, three children who watch their world change around them and must find the courage to face it. Through their story, readers come to know Christopher Seider not as a name in a history book but as a real boy whose life mattered.
As America marks 250 years of independence, Vandaele offers this story as a gift to the young readers of the nation he chose as his home, a reminder that the fight for freedom began with ordinary people, some of them children.
Christopher Vandaele is available for press, interviews, readings, book signings, school and library visits, and speaking engagements.