Guest Post: The Girl with the Silver Star by Rachel Zolotov

Please join me in welcoming Rachel Zolotov to Let Them Read Books! Rachel is celebrating the release of her debut historical novel, The Girl with the Silver Star, and I'm thrilled to have her here today with a guest post about the inspiration for the novel: her own family's harrowing history. Read on and grab the Kindle copy for only $2.99!

For the readers of The Nightingale and Lilac Girls, inspired by the true story of the author’s great-grandmother’s journey during World War II, The Girl with the Silver Star is the extraordinary story of a mother’s love and will to survive during one of history’s darkest time periods.

As a hailstorm of bombs begins to shatter the city of Minsk in Belarus, Raisa and her family run through the darkness of night to take cover. When Raisa, Abraham, and their daughters, Luba and Sofia, emerge from the bomb shelter, they find an unfamiliar city before them; chaos and terror burn in every direction. Fearing for their lives, they must leave at once to find the rest of their family. But before they are able to escape, Abraham is conscripted into the Russian Army and the family is forced to part ways. Raisa’s love and strength are put to the ultimate test as she finds herself on her own with her two young daughters in tow. How will she manage alone without her soulmate by her side?

Relying on hope, resourcefulness and courage, they walk, hitch hike and take trains heading for Uzbekistan, over 2,500 miles from home. Along the way they run from bombs, endure starvation, and face death.

Raisa finds solace in the women around her. Her mother, sisters, old friends and new help carry her through the difficult war years, but Raisa’s longing to reunite with Abraham still rages inside her heart. Will they ever see each other again? Will Raisa and her family find their way back to their homeland?

The Girl with the Silver Star is a captivating journey through war-torn Soviet Union as it illuminates a unique part of WWII history, the female heroes. Raisa’s journey is a tribute to the nameless women, their determination, bravery, grief and unwavering love during impossible times. Their stories shouldn’t be forgotten.  

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It was early winter of 2016 and I had just finished reading The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. As I turned the last page and closed the book, I started to think back to the stories my parents had told me about by family during WWII, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t really know much about what they went through. My family is Jewish, and they lived in Minsk, Belarus – I knew there had to be more to their story than just the few details I had overheard as a child. 

As a young girl, I could be often found evading bedtime by reading historical novels and memoirs from WWII under the covers with a flashlight. This fascination didn’t stop in adulthood, so how was it that I barely knew anything about my own family’s past?

I picked up the phone and called my mother, on a mission to find out more. I had my notebook ready to scrawl down all the details. A few minutes later, I had a page of notes, but barely any more information than I had already known. My mother explained that they didn’t talk about those times much. For obvious reasons, it was too painful of a memory to relive. There was, however, one detail that I didn’t already know. My great-grandmother Raisa and her two girls, Luba (my grandmother) and Sofia, evacuated to Uzbekistan during the war.

I was having a hard time imagining how many countless miles it took to get from Minsk to Tashkent. After a quick search, I discovered how incredibly far they had to travel; over 4,000 km. That’s about the same distance as New York to San Diego. They walked some of the way, and took trains for the rest. As a mother of two girls myself, I thought about taking that journey with them under those circumstances, and couldn’t fathom how they survived such a journey. I was instantly drawn to find as many of the puzzle pieces as I could.

That was all it took. One conversation and a few hours of research later, I was inspired. I needed to know more, and thus it began, The Girl with the Silver Star.

Blog Tour Guest Post by Rachel McMillan, Author of The London Restoration

Please join me in welcoming Rachel McMillan to Let Them Read Books! Rachel is touring the blogosphere with her newest novel, The London Restoration, and I'm thrilled to have her here today with a guest post about endings and beginnings and cinematic themes in her storytelling. Read on and enter to win a paperback copy of The London Restoration!

From author Rachel McMillan comes a richly researched historical romance that takes place in post-World War II London and features a strong female lead.

Determined to save their marriage and the city they love, two people divided by World War II’s secrets rebuild their lives, their love, and their world.

London, Fall 1945. Architectural historian Diana Somerville’s experience as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park and her knowledge of London’s churches intersect in MI6’s pursuit of a Russian agent named Eternity. Diana wants nothing more than to begin again with her husband Brent after their separation during the war, but her signing of the Official Secrets Act keeps him at a distance.

Brent Somerville, professor of theology at King’s College, hopes aiding his wife with her church consultations will help him better understand why she disappeared when he needed her most. But he must find a way to reconcile his traumatic experiences as a stretcher bearer on the European front with her obvious lies about her wartime activities and whereabouts.

Featuring a timeless love story bolstered by flashbacks and the excavation of a priceless Roman artifact, The London Restoration is a richly atmospheric look at post-war London as two people changed by war rebuild amidst the city’s reconstruction.

AMAZON | BARNES AND NOBLE | INDIEBOUND

If my book were one of the movies I love, the credits would roll and the reel would end just as my action is beginning.

For in movies set in war time, the end is always the reunion between the lovers.  A violin score swells and the lighting design frames the embracing couple in sepia.  Somewhere a bird flies and the clouds part and the old war song "We’ll Meet Again" is made manifest.  The heroine is kissed brilliantly senseless by a uniformed soldier whose ardor inspires her left heel to raise off  the ground. 

Fade to black.  The theme overtakes the violin swell and I swallow the last of my wine and bunch the tissue holding the last of my sniffles and snobs.  Love wins.  Love reunites.

Cover Celebration: The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

Y'all know Kate is one of my favorite histfic authors, and I'm so excited to be part of her cover celebration team! You can help spread the word by sharing this post and adding The Rose Code on Goodreads!

THE ROSE CODE
by New York Times bestselling author Kate Quinn
(Morrow; on-sale March 9, 2021)

Preorder  |  Add on Goodreads  |  Kate's Newsletter

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.

1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter--the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger--and their true enemy--closer...

Preorder  |  Add on Goodreads  |  Kate's Newsletter

Guest Post: Hannah's War by Jan Eliasberg

Please join me in welcoming Jan Eliasberg to Let Them Read Books! Jan's debut historical novel, Hannah's War, was released today, and I'm thrilled to have her here with a guest post about the real-life inspiration for her novel, Dr. Lise Meitner. Read on and enter to win a paperback copy of Hannah's War!

Berlin, 1938. Groundbreaking physicist Dr. Hannah Weiss is on the verge of the greatest discovery of the 20th century: splitting the atom. She understands that the energy released by her discovery can power entire cities or destroy them. Hannah believes the weapon's creation will secure an end to future wars, but as a Jewish woman living under the harsh rule of the Third Reich, her research is belittled, overlooked, and eventually stolen by her German colleagues. Faced with an impossible choice, Hannah must decide what she is willing to sacrifice in pursuit of science's greatest achievement.

New Mexico, 1945. Returning wounded and battered from the liberation of Paris, Major Jack Delaney arrives in the New Mexican desert with a mission: to catch a spy. Someone in the top-secret nuclear lab at Los Alamos has been leaking encoded equations to Hitler's scientists. Chief among Jack's suspects is the brilliant and mysterious Hannah Weiss, an exiled physicist lending her talent to J. Robert Oppenheimer's mission. All signs point to Hannah as the traitor, but over three days of interrogation that separate her lies from the truth, Jack will realize they have more in common than either one bargained for.

Hannah's War is a thrilling wartime story of loyalty, truth, and the unforeseeable fallout of a single choice.

Amazon  ~  Goodreads  ~  Jan Eliasberg

About Dr. Lise Meitner

By Jan Eliasberg

One of the great luxuries of living in New York City is having access to the Public Library’s extraordinary microfilm collection; it was there that I read the issue of the New York Times on the day the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In the Times’ summary of the complex and secret history of the Manhattan Project, one paragraph leapt off the page: “The key component that allowed the Allies to develop the bomb was brought to the Allies by a “female, non-Aryan physicist.’” Who was this woman? And why isn’t her face staring out of every science textbook?

I knew I had to tell her story. So began a ten-year quest that took me deeply into the history of the atomic bomb and the physics that propelled it. My mystery woman was Dr. Lise Meitner, an Austrian female scientist, a Jew, working at the highest levels of research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. I tore through her diaries and letters and discovered that she and her partner, Otto Hahn, were on the verge of splitting the atom when Austria was annexed. Meitner’s privileged position, and all the protections her colleagues had promised, evaporated within six terrifying hours as she fled Berlin within minutes of being captured and sent to the camps.

Otto Hahn, who remained in Berlin, was so dependent on Meitner that he continued to collaborate with her, even after she’d fled to Sweden. He sent her the results of their experiments on postcards via courier. It was Meitner, not Hahn, who analyzed the results and discovered that they had split the atom. Because she was Jewish, the papers published in Germany did not have her name on them; if they had borne her name, they would immediately have been discredited as “Jewish Physics.” It wasn’t surprising to find that rabid Anti-Semitism in Germany had prevented Meitner from getting the credit she had earned.

Blog Tour Q&A: The Girl I Left Behind by Andie Newton

Please join me in welcoming Andie Newton to Let Them Read Books! Andie is touring the blogosphere with her debut historical novel, The Girl I Left Behind, and I had the chance to ask her about the inspiration for the story and the characters. Read on and enter to win a paperback copy of The Girl I Left Behind!

What would you risk to save our best-friend?

As a young girl, Ella never considered that those around her weren’t as they appeared. But when her childhood best-friend shows Ella that you can’t always believe what you see, Ella finds herself thrown into the world of the German Resistance.

On a dark night in 1941, Claudia is taken by the Gestapo, likely never to be seen again, unless Ella can save her. With the help of the man she loves, Ella must undertake her most dangerous mission yet and infiltrate the Nazi Party.

Selling secrets isn’t an easy job. In order to find Claudia, Ella must risk not only her life, but the lives of those she cares about.

Will Ella be able to leave behind the girl of her youth and step into the shoes of another?

Perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The German Midwife and Kate Furnivall.

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON | BARNES AND NOBLE | APPLE IBOOKS | KOBO

Hi Andie! Thanks so much for stopping by Let Them Read Books!

What inspired you to write The Girl I Left Behind?

I never thought I’d write a novel. Ever. By accident, I caught a documentary on the History Channel that talked about the youth resistance. I have a degree in history, so I suppose you can say my thoughts are already in the past, and when I find areas of history that I don’t know a lot about, I’m always inspired to find out more. I searched for a novel about the youth German Resistance and couldn’t find one, and as cliché as it sounds, I set out to write the novel I wanted to read.

I had so many questions. How far would a young person go in the name of freedom? Most importantly, what would make them break? In my book, Ella, the main character, joins a resistance group called the Falcons. This group was inspired by the resistance groups that existed in Nazi Germany at the time. The White Rose, probably one of the most notable youth resistance groups, was a passive group of young adults known for their anti-Nazi leaflets. The Swing Kids was another, a group (and a movement) who openly resisted the confines of Nazi behavior. They listened to banned music and essentially behaved like American teens, which was absolutely scandalous and an arrestable offense. However, not all youth resistance groups were passive. In fact, some were violent street thugs who sought out kids in the Hitler Youth to beat up.

Yet, in between these groups, between the passive and the aggressive, there were youths printing phony identification papers and providing safe houses for Jews—ah, now this was getting very interesting. Then there were the special sects: renegades—some of them female—who sabotaged patrols, schemed to assassinate Hitler, and infiltrated the Reich to spy for the British. It was upon learning this that the idea to have The Girl I Left Behind play out as a female-driven spy novel became too good to resist. 

Blog Tour Review: The Painted Castle by Kristy Cambron

From the Back Cover:

A lost painting of Queen Victoria. A library bricked off from the world. Three women, separated by time, whose lives are irrevocably changed.

When art historian Keira Foley is hired to authenticate a painting at a centuries-old East Suffolk manor, she hopes this is just the thing to get her career and life back on track. But from the time she arrives at Parham Hill Estate and begins working alongside rumored art thief Emory Scott, she’s left with far more questions than answers. Could this lost painting of Queen Victoria be a duplicate of the original Winterhalter masterpiece, and if so, who is the artist?

As Keira begins to unravel the mystery behind the portrait of the queen, two women emerge from the estate’s forgotten past. In Victorian England, talented sketch artist Elizabeth Meade is engaged to Viscount Huxley, then owner of Parham Hill. While there, master portrait artist Franz Winterhalter takes her under his wing, but Elizabeth’s real motive for being at Parham Hill has nothing to do with art. She’s determined to avenge her father’s brutal murder—even if it means feigning an engagement to the very man she believes committed the crime.

A century later, Amelia Woods—a WWII widow who has turned Parham Hill Estate and its beloved library into a boarding school for refugee children—receives military orders to house a troop of American pilots. She is determined that the children in her care remain untouched by the war, but it’s proving difficult with officers taking up every square inch of their world… and one in particular vying for a space in her long shut up heart.

Set in three time periods—the rapid change of Victorian England, the peak of England’s home front tensions at the end of World War II, and modern day—The Painted Castle unfolds a story of heartache and hope and unlocks secrets lost for generations, just waiting to be found.

My Thoughts:

This is a heartwarming story entwining three different generations in three different time periods, and at the heart of each is the same special library and the mysterious portrait it holds. The portrait mystery is based on a real portrait of a young Queen Victoria painted by Franz Winterhalter, known as "the secret picture," featuring Victoria in a more informal pose for her husband, Prince Albert, and the mystery of who painted the copy of it and how it came to be walled away in a secret library drives the present-day story.

It's rare that I enjoy all of the story lines equally in a multi-stranded story. I usually find myself drawn more to the past, but in this case I was hooked on all three. Three women trying to pick up the pieces of their lives after tragedy and heartache, trying to find themselves and their place in changing worlds. I was so engrossed and so anxious to see how each story would play out that I did not want to put the book down. The suspense, the anticipation, the romance--all struck a perfect balance. And it was an emotional read on many levels. This is inspirational fiction, but that theme is very light. It's practically nonexistent in the two past story lines but it's surprisingly more relevant in the present-day story, and I thought that a nice twist.

I'm tempted to rate this five stars just on all the feels alone, but I can't overlook how rushed the resolutions of each story line felt. Endings can make or break a book. The ending certainly doesn't break this one, but after so much delicious buildup, I would have liked a little more time spent on wrapping up each story. Some things took place off the page and I questioned why the reader wasn't made privy to those plot points as they happened. And I still have some questions, particularly about Viscount Huxley. It's still a satisfying ending; I just wanted a little more insight and closure to make it perfect.

Guest Post: When They Made Us Leave by Annette Oppenlander

Please join me in welcoming Annette Oppenlander to Let Them Read Books! Annette is celebrating the release of her new historical novel, When They Made Us Leave, and I'm thrilled to have her here today with a guest post about the subject of the novel, Nazi Germany's KLV child evacuation program.

When They Made Us Leave tells the touching love story of Hilda and Peter, whose budding relationship ends abruptly when they are forced to attend separate evacuation camps during WWII. Each confronted with terror and cruelty as well as unexpected kindness, they must rise above to survive the war and find each other once more. 

Solingen, 1943: As bombs carpet Germany and fourteen-year old Hilda is falling in love with her childhood friend and next-door neighbor, Peter, he excitedly takes off to an evacuation camp in Pomerania, six hundred miles from home. Though Peter soon finds that his expectations are far from reality, he is ordered to write happy letters home, even when things take a turn for the worse and a new Hitler youth leader attempts to convert camp into a military battalion.

Meanwhile, Hilda must unwillingly accompany her classmates to a cloister in Bavaria run by a draconian Abbess. There Hilda struggles to overcome her homesickness and yearning for Peter while helping a classmate hide her bedwetting accidents.

As Germany is buried under rubble and supplies shorten, Peter lands at an inn near Gdansk. By now, all he wants is to go home. But his new teacher, a staunch national socialist, deems their place safe despite the refugees from the east whispering of German defeat by an advancing Russian Army.

When the cloister is converted into a German field hospital, enemy planes destroy Hilda’s homebound train and kill her teacher. Weeks later, tired and hungry, she arrives home to find her mother safe. But Peter has not returned, nor is there any news of him. Refusing to believe the worst, she must survive in a barely recognizable world.

Amazon  ~  Barnes & Noble  ~  Goodreads  ~  Author Website

Few people outside Germany realize that during World War II Hitler created a wide-sweeping evacuation program, the Kinderlandverschickung or KLV, for its German children and youths. This supposedly voluntary program intended to send children and especially teens aged 11 to 16 to camps. Not just for a few weeks, but for months, and as of 1943 for years. Since exact statistics are missing, it is estimated that two million children participated.

The word evacuation or Evakuierung was not to be used because it carried the wrong connotation not suitable for the propaganda of the Third Reich. Instead, the KLV was sold to parents as a vacation during which children could study, exercise and play in healthy environments, eat well and enjoy themselves tremendously. Posters showed happy children going on adventure, newspapers ran beautiful stories of summer trips and joyous parents sending off their kids. That was the official version.

The unofficial true intent was to raise Germany’s children and youth as national socialists far from the influence of families, friends and churches. To do this effectively, many camps assumed militaristic programs with strict all-day schedules, inspections, reports and training.  Boys were supposed to be tough and heroic and become soldiers. Girls were supposed to be strong and brave, but also beautiful and healthy to grow into mothers to produce more children to become more soldiers and mothers.

Blog Tour Spotlight: In the Full Light of the Sun by Clare Clark

In the Full Light of the Sun by Clare Clark

Publication Date: July 9, 2019

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Hardcover, Paperback, & eBook

Genre: Historical Fiction

Based on a true story, this gorgeous new novel follows the fortunes of three Berliners caught up in an art scandal—involving newly discovered van Goghs—that rocks Germany amidst the Nazis’ rise to power.

Hedonistic and politically turbulent, Berlin in the 1920s is a city of seedy night clubs and sumptuous art galleries. It is home to millionaires and mobs storming bakeries for rationed bread. These disparate Berlins collide when Emmeline, a young art student; Julius, an art expert; and a mysterious dealer named Rachmann all find themselves caught up in the astonishing discovery of thirty-two previously unknown paintings by Vincent van Gogh.

In the Full Light of the Sun explores the trio’s complex relationships and motivations, their hopes, their vanities, and their self-delusions—for the paintings are fakes and they are in their own ways complicit. Theirs is a cautionary tale about of the aspirations of the new Germany and a generation determined to put the humiliations of the past behind them.

With her signature impeccable and evocative historical detail, Clare Clark has written a gripping novel about beauty and justice, and the truth that may be found when our most treasured beliefs are revealed as illusions.

Praise

“As compelling as it is expansive… In an age that has apparently lost faith in experts and verifiable sources of information, Clark’s fictionalization of the Wacker affair stands as a salutary tale for the post-truth era.” —The Guardian

“[Clark] excels at evoking the febrile tensions of the Weimar Republic… A gripping and ultimately moving story about art, artifice and authenticity.” —The Mail on Sunday

“With great skill and sympathy, Clark evokes a febrile society in which politics, love and art offer no certainties, and the ground always threatens to open beneath her characters’ feet.” —The Sunday Times

“Set over the decade of the Nazis’ rise to power, In the Full Light of the Sun loosely follows the real-life mystery of whether paintings apparently by Van Gogh that were exhibited in Berlin in the 1920s were forgeries…The most enjoyable mystery here is the matter of whether anyone is really their authentic self.” —The Times (UK)

“An engrossing read.” —Image Magazine Ireland

“Clark’s beautiful writing is as dense and layered as thick, Post-Impressionist oils.” —Tablet

“A completely fascinating novel about the early 20th century art world and its many dubious machinations. Expertly researched, compellingly narrated and full of potent resonance today.” —William Boyd, author of Sweet Caress

“Clare Clark casts her spell of time and place with casual elegance and no apparent tricks - yet caught me up in this juicy story of colossal art fraud, the passions and intrigues of her vivid and moving characters - and the truly terrifying rise of the Nazi party, with all its contemporary echoes. The atmosphere of this book lingers on.” —Laline Paull, author of The Bees

“I loved In the Full Light of the Sun, a novel about deception, self-deception, truth, love and lies that will enthrall anyone fascinated by Van Gogh, the art world and Berlin in the 1920s. Written with verve and assurance it is both engaging and humane.” —Amanda Craig, author of the Lie of the Land
“In her gripping new novel Clare Clark paints a picture of Weimar Berlin in which surface glitter hides sinister and bitter truths. Page by page she brings secret lives into the light; nothing: not love, not art, not politics, is what it seems, and few escape the brutal forces that emerge.” —Stella Tillyard, author of Aristocrats

Blog Tour Q&A: No Woman's Land by Ellie Midwood

Please join me in welcoming Ellie Midwood to Let Them Read Books! Ellie is touring the blogosphere with her newest historical novel, No Woman's Land, based on an amazing true story, and I recently had the chance to ask her a few questions about her inspiration and her research. Read on and enter to win a paperback copy of No Woman's Land!

“It was very dangerous for him, and he knew it. But his love for me was stronger than fear.” – Ilse Stein

This novel is based on the inspiring and moving love story of Ilse Stein, a German Jew, and Willy Schultz, a Luftwaffe Captain in the Minsk ghetto, who risked his life to save the one he loved the most.

When the last of the Jews’ rights are stripped in 1941, Ilse’s family is deported to a Minsk ghetto. Confined to a Sonderghetto and unable to speak the locals’ language, Ilse struggles to support the surviving members of her family. Befriended by a local underground member Rivka, Ilse partakes in small acts of resistance and sabotage to help her fellow Jews escape to the partisans.

A few months later, after losing almost his entire brigade of workers to one of the bloodiest massacres conducted by the SS, a local administrative officer Willy Schultz summons the survivors to form a new brigade. Ilse’s good looks immediately catch his eye, and he makes her a leader of the new unit and later, an office worker. Soon, an unlikely romance blossoms amid death and gore, moving a Nazi officer to go to great risks to protect not only Ilse but as many others as possible and allowing a Jewish girl to open her heart to the former enemy. Knowing that the ghetto would soon be liquidated, Willy Schultz swears to save Ilse, even if the cost would be his own life.

“We live together, or we die together,” – an ultimate oath of love in the most harrowing setting.

Dark, haunting, but full of hope, “No Woman’s Land” is a testament to the love that is stronger than fear and death itself.

AMAZON | BARNES AND NOBLE | KOBO

Hi Ellie! Welcome to Let Them Read Books!

No Woman's Land is based on a true story. How did you first discover Ilse and Willy's story, and what inspired you to write about them? 

I first discovered their story while doing research for my other novel. As a matter of fact, I think it was an article about a documentary that was made about them in the 1990s (Ilse died soon after). Needless to say, I began searching for the said documentary and found it on Amazon (it’s called The Jewess and the Captain) and ever since I watched it, this incredible story wouldn’t let me sleep until I put it on paper.

Willy Schultz was a member of the Party, and even though he wasn’t a rabid anti-Semite like most of the SS members, he still was a Nazi after all. The fact that he not only fell in love with a Jewish girl from his brigade but later risked his life to save her and the other Jewish people from the ghetto was the most inspiring aspect (in my eyes at least); his very personality and views changed so drastically under Ilse’s gentle influence, it was almost unbelievable given the circumstances. That transformation of his, proved once again my personal belief that love will always win over hatred, if only we allow it into our hearts. I thought it was particularly important to remind people about it today, to inspire them to be kinder to each other, to choose love over hatred and prejudice, to care for the oppressed, and to stand up for what is right. Willy ended up defecting to the Soviet partisans together with Ilse, along with the people he managed to save, and I felt like such a story needed to be told today. That was my main inspiration.

What kind of research did you do to bring them to life as characters in your novel? 

I tried to stay as close to their real story as possible, only using creative license where no source was available to rely on. My main source was, of course, the documentary itself – what can be more reliable than the person who inspired my character telling her own story, right? Luckily for me, their story was also mentioned in B. Epstein’s study “The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943. Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism,” which also helped me immensely to piece together what was happening in the ghetto and between Ilse and Willy during that fateful year. To get all the historical details right (such as what the living conditions were like in the ghetto, what people ate, how the black market functioned, what the resistance movement was like within the ghetto walls, what kind of work the Jewish people were forced to do, etc.), I relied on survivors’ memoirs (We Remember Lest the World Forgets and H. Smolar’s memoir The Minsk Ghetto) and also historical and archival documents, which survived the war and are currently available to the public. This way I could not only present the history of the ghetto and the partisan movement, along with the general atmosphere of occupied Minsk as close to reality as possible, but could also get a glimpse into the antagonists’ minds – the dreaded SS. Some of the orders, issued by the high-ranking officers, survived the war and brought the atrocities, committed by the men in their charge, to life.

As a ghetto inhabitant, Ilse’s life was in constant danger, and I felt that it was important to tell her story without glossing anything over, with all the horror she had to witness. Also, bringing the SS antagonists into the story as active participants helped me better demonstrate the drastic contrast in the mindset of the killers and reluctant bureaucrats like Willy. It’s mostly by watching them and their atrocious actions that Willy realized what a terrible regime he was a part of and why he needed to do something to save at least some people from his compatriots.

Blog Tour Guest Post: Repentance by Andrew Lam

Please join me in welcoming Andrew Lam to Let Them Read Books! Andrew is touring the blogosphere with his new historical novel, Repentance, and he's here today sharing ten fascinating facts about Asian Americans in US military history. Read on and enter to win a paperback copy of Repentance!

France, October 1944. A Japanese American war hero has a secret.

A secret so awful he’d rather die than tell anyone–one so entwined with the brave act that made him a hero that he’s determined never to speak of the war. Ever.

Decades later his son, Daniel Tokunaga, a world-famous cardiac surgeon, is perplexed when the U.S. government comes calling, wanting to know about his father’s service with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during WWII. Something terrible happened while his father was fighting the Germans in France, and the Department of Defense won’t stop its investigation until it’s determined exactly who did what.

Wanting answers of his own, Daniel upends his life to find out what his father did on a small, obscure hilltop half a world away. As his quest for the truth unravels his family’s catastrophic past, the only thing for certain is that nothing–his life, career, and family–can ever be the same again.

AMAZON | BARNES AND NOBLE | INDIEBOUND

10 Things you didn't know about Asian Americans

in U.S. military history

My passion for historical fiction stems from my love of American history. In honor of May being Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, here are ten things you didn’t know about Asian Americans in the U.S. military.

1. The first recorded history of Asian Americans fighting for the U.S. occurred in 1815, during the War of 1812. At the Battle of New Orleans (which took place after the Treaty of Ghent had been signed in Europe, ending the war), General Andrew Jackson noted that “Manilamen” under the command of Jean Baptiste Lafitte had helped defeat the British.

2.  Dozens of Chinese Americans fought in the Civil War. In 2008, Congress passed a resolution honoring the contributions of Asian Americans in the Civil War. At a time when there were only approximately 200 Chinese Americans living in the eastern U.S., 58 of them served in the military. Three Chinese were promoted to the rank of corporal, a remarkable achievement given attitudes toward race at the time. At least five were recorded to fight for the Confederacy, including Christopher and Stephen Bunker, the sons of Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker, who, after growing famous as part of the Barnum and Bailey Circus, married two southern sisters and became slave-owning farmers in North Carolina.

3. The first Asian American graduated from West Point in 1914. He was Vincente Lim, a Filipino who joined the Philippine Scouts and rose to the rank of Brigadier General during WWII. During the Battle of Bataan, he commanded the 41st Infantry Division, was captured and was later executed by the Japanese. Prior to Lim, the first Asian graduate of a U.S. military academy was Matsumura Junzo, who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1873; but he was a Japanese national who returned to Japan.

4. An Asian American first won the Medal of Honor in 1913. Private Jose Nisperos served with the Philippine Scouts. The Philippines were held by the United States after the Spanish-American War. The Moro Rebellion (1899-1913) in the Philippines was an armed conflict between the U.S. military and the Moro – an ethnic Muslim group that had resisted previous colonizers like the Spanish and Japanese. On September 24, 1911, Niperos’ unit was ambushed by spear-wielding Moro fighters. Niperos received multiple spear wounds, lost the use of one arm, and could not stand, yet he held his position, fired his rifle one-handed, and gave his unit time to withdraw. For this gallant action he was awarded the Medal of Honor in February 1913.

Guest Post: The Italian Couple by J. R. Rogers

Please join me in welcoming J.R. Rogers to Let Them Read Books! I'm happy to have J.R. here today with a guest post about La Teleferica Massaua-Asmara, an engineering marvel that played a pivotal role in Italy in World War II and plays a pivotal role in J.R.'s newest historical novel, The Italian Couple.

Colonel Francesco Ferrazza, a disciplined and inflexible Royal Italian Army officer with Italy’s Fascist Military Information Service, and his attractive British wife, Emilia, are posted to Asmara affectionately referred to as ‘Little Rome’ by Mussolini. The colonel is a familiar figure at the military casino and bordello where he brags at the bar he can bend a fireplace poker in half. But he is astonished when in 1938 he is ordered by his Rome superior to set in motion an unusual but clandestine sabotage operation of the engineering marvel that is the Asmara-Massawa cableway that links Italian Eritrea to the sea.

Built by the Italians it is the longest aerial line of its kind in the world but it is of such strategic importance the army comes to realize they may have made a strategic mistake in constructing it. They fear it could fall into the hands of neighboring Ethiopia—whom they defeated in a colonial war just two years ago.

Fearful of the devastating power of exposure Ferrazza sets out to find someone to carry out Operation Red Lion and meets Mario Caparrotti, an amateur race car driver. He plans to compete in the first Christmas Day automobile race through town.

Greedy, boastful, and ignorant, Caparrotti is all of the things the colonel detests in his fellow human beings, civilians in particular. But Ferrazza is desperate to recruit him because he is a cableway mechanic who has unfettered access to the engine room. The colonel entices him with his wife. Prodded by her husband the reluctant Emilia unhappily plays her part by becoming Caparrotti’s lover.

But things begin to fall apart: Caparrotti balks and now also demands significant sums of cash and when the colonel murders a colonial civil servant who has somehow learned of the plot he orders Caparrotti to help him dispose of the body. With the driver more reluctant than ever, and with the deadline drawing nearer, the colonel will do anything to ensure the sabotage is carried out.

Unexpectedly, Gyles Aiscroft, a Rome-based British freelance foreign correspondent, and an old family friend of Emilia’s parents arrives in Asmara. Her father, Edmund Playfair, the senior intelligence officer at the British embassy in Rome, has asked Aiscroft to look in on her. An older man, she finds herself drawn to him and confides her plight to him. They embark on a brief, intense affair. But what she doesn’t count on is his falling in love with her and wanting to whisk her off to Capri.

Determined to leave Africa with his mission complete, and with the deadline almost upon him, Ferrazza instructs the resigned and fearful Caparrotti how to go about setting the dynamite charges.
And as the tick-tock of the clock counts down the final hours the colonel belatedly begins to grasp that in ‘Little Rome’ nothing is what it seems, no one can be trusted and, when serving Mussolini, failure will never be condoned.

Guest Post: The Genesis of Artist, Soldier, Lover, Muse by Arthur Hittner

Please join me in welcoming Arthur Hittner to Let Them Read Books! Arthur is promoting his novel, Artist, Soldier, Lover, Muse, and I'm happy to have him here today with a guest post about the inspiration behind his novel.

Freshly graduated from Yale, Henry J. Kapler parlays his talent, determination, and creative energy into a burgeoning art career under the wing of painters such as Edward Hopper and Reginald Marsh. The young artist first gains notoriety when his painting of a symbolic handshake between a young, African-American baseball player and his Southern white rival is attacked by a knife-wielding assailant while on display at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington. Yet even as his art star rises, Henry’s personal life turns precarious—and perilous—when his love for Fiona, a young WPA muralist, collides with his growing attraction to the exquisitely beautiful Alice, an ex-chorus girl who becomes his model and muse.  Alice is the girlfriend of Fiona’s cousin, Jake Powell, the hotheaded, hard-drinking outfielder for the New York Yankees whose jealousy explodes into abuse and rage, endangering the lives of all three.  While Henry wrestles with his hopelessly complicated love life, he also struggles mightily to reconcile his pacifism with the rabid patriotism of his Jewish-Russian émigré father.  As war draws near, Henry faces two difficult choices, one of which could cost him his life.

THE GENESIS OF ARTIST, SOLDIER, LOVER, MUSE

by Arthur Hittner

A large wooden crate arrived on my doorstep on a winter morning in early 2006.  Inside was the painting Eventide, a 1936 work by the artist Harold J. Rabinovitz (1915-44), a poignant depiction of a crouching young mother in a rose-colored dress clutching her naked infant, the child looking out the open doorway at the approaching figure of his father, a lunch pail in his hand, an expression of exhaustion on his face.  As a collector of American paintings executed during the Great Depression, this 1936 work was irresistible, though I’d never before heard of the artist.  That so talented a painter could have gone unnoticed for much of the seven decades since Eventide’s creation mystified me—and motivated me.

Years later, I self-published a brief biography and catalogue raisonne, At the Threshold of Brilliance: The Brief But Splendid Career of Harold J. Rabinovitz (The Rabinovitz Project, 2014; rev. ed., 2017).  I’d traced the living descendants of the artist, determining that the bulk of his output resided in the attics and basements of his nephews and nieces, and in the vaults of an art museum in Springfield, Massachusetts.   I viewed and photographed the collections of the descendants and the paintings in the museum.  Many were brilliant works, very much the product of the times in which he painted: a blind beggar in a subway car, his hand turned upward in supplication; a jobless man on a curb, his face etched with dejection and hopelessness; an old woman, clad in rags, selling pretzels outside a subway station.  Along with the paintings, I’d gained access to an old scrapbook that had been lovingly maintained by the artist’s parents.  Inside were yellowed newspaper clippings from the Thirties and early Forties, chronicling the young artist’s triumphs and sorrows.

Not surprisingly, no market exists for a biography of a long-forgotten artist, however talented.  Except for the Frick Art Reference Library and the Yale University Library (where Rabinovitz obtained his degree), I could count the proud possessors of the fruits of my labor on two hands.
But no matter.  I wrote that book out of a compulsion to discover the story behind my painting.  Yet I learned much more: I’d become immersed in another time and place—the New York City art world of the late Thirties, a metropolis teeming with struggling artists, many surviving on meager paychecks from government-sponsored artist support programs.   At some point I had an epiphany.  I realized that I could share this world with a wider swath of readers by turning to historical fiction.
Inspired by the life I’d just documented, I created my own young artist, Henry J. Kapler, placing him in the heart of the world I’d uncovered in my research.  Buoyed by further research and honed by an endless succession of drafts, Artist, Soldier, Lover, Muse (Apple Ridge Fine Arts Press, December, 2017) was ready for publication.

Henry J. Kapler is not Harold Rabinovitz, although their lives share a number of salient facts, a common timeline, and even some of the same artworks.  Henry is a figment of my imagination, as are his thoughts, desires, motivations, quirks, and foibles.  Beyond this, I sought to portray the world in which Henry resides, the New York art world of the late Depression, including the artists, athletes, politicians, events, and institutions that contributed to the rich history of the period, with as much historical accuracy as possible. 

In tackling historical fiction, one often uncovers little known characters and facts that prove the adage of Mark Twain that truth is stranger than fiction.  In seeking a villain, an author could have done no better than New York Yankee outfielder Jake Powell, whose on-field belligerence was the perfect resume for his violent encounters with Alice and Fiona, the two women in Henry’s life, and whose ill-fated radio interview in 1939 and the events that followed are little-known footnotes in the shameful history of segregation in professional sport.   Similarly, the saga of “Bunny” Taliaferro, the gifted African-American athlete from Henry’s hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts and target of a 1934 racial incident in Gastonia, North Carolina, seemed a natural inspiration for Henry’s imaginary masterpiece, Gastonia Renaissance.

Scores of artworks make at least a cameo appearance in Artist, Soldier, Lover, Muse.  Paintings by artists other than Henry Kapler are works that might have been seen by a young artist in New York City at the time.  Some are monumental murals that still adorn important buildings in New York.  The paintings attributed to Henry are about evenly divided between purely fictional creations and works painted by Harold Rabinovitz, although the inspiration behind all of Henry’s paintings, as well as the details of their creation, derive solely from my own imagination.

Blog Tour Excerpt: Chasing the Wind by C.C. Humphreys

CHASING THE WIND BY C.C. HUMPHREYS

Publication Date: June 5, 2018

Paperback & eBook; 320 Pages

Genre: Historical/Women’s Fiction/Mystery

Smuggler. Smoker. Aviatrix. Thief. The dynamic Roxy Loewen is all these things and more, in this riveting and gorgeous historical fiction novel for readers of Paula McLain, Roberta Rich, Kate Morton and Jacqueline Winspear.

You should never fall in love with a flyer. You should only fall in love with flight.

That’s what Roxy Loewen always thought, until she falls for fellow pilot Jocco Zomack as they run guns into Ethiopia. Jocco may be a godless commie, but his father is a leading art dealer and he’s found the original of Bruegel’s famous painting, the Fall of Icarus. The trouble is, it’s in Spain, a country slipping fast into civil war. The money’s better than good–if Roxy can just get the painting to Berlin and back out again before Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring and his Nazi pals get their hands on it . . .

But this is 1936, and Hitler’s Olympics are in full swing. Not only that, but Göring has teamed up with Roxy’s greatest enemy: Sydney Munroe, an American billionaire responsible for the death of her beloved dad seven years before. When the Nazis steal the painting, Roxy and Jocco decide that they are just going to have to steal it back.

What happens when Icarus flies too close to the sun? Roxy is going to find out. From African skies to a cellar in Madrid, from the shadow cast by the swastika to the world above the clouds on the Hindenburg’s last voyage, in the end Roxy will have just two choices left–but only one bullet.

Excerpt:

There’s nothing like dying to make a girl appreciate living.

As she stared down into the pitiless black of the night, seeking, forever seeking, the one pinpoint of light that might yet save her— but it had better hurry up—Roxy Loewen thought about what was waiting for her.

A straw-roofed hut with a tin bath filled with tepid water on its third use that would feel like a clawfoot tub at the Plaza. Rum so raw it hurt your eyes but when mixed with tamarind juice would taste like a Negroni at the Ritz. Steak from a camel or an ass surpassing the finest filet mignon that Rex’s 110th Street chop house could serve.

And at the end of all those, a German. Jochen Zomack—Jocco— with his big hands and his big laugh and the hank of brown hair that, when he let it fall over his face just so and in the right light, made him look like Cary Grant. Jocco, down there somewhere, scanning the black skies as she scanned the black ground, ready with his light.

If her message had gotten through. Communications had been sketchy since the Italians had begun what many were saying would be their final offensive. The gallant, heavily outgunned Ethiopians— guns, hell, a lot of them still fought with spears—would make their last stand against the invader near their capital, Addis Ababa.

The rumours had decided her. To fly her cargo of rifles west into that war zone was suicide. If the Italians didn’t shoot her out of the sky, there probably wouldn’t be an airfield left to land on. The one where she waited at Malco Dube would also be bombed again. Even if her Lockheed 227—Asteria 6, Roxy called her—wasn’t hit on the ground, there wouldn’t be enough time to fill in the craters on the runway that was already more gopher burrow than the racetrack it once had been. But if she could get her cargo to Jocco, he’d know what to do with it. He’d know where some of his comrades might still be fighting. He had run guns all over this continent. All over the world, truly. Hell, he might even get her paid. Though it wasn’t so much the money she’d been thinking of as she’d taken off from the foothills of the mountains and headed toward a moon just peeking in the east. It was him. Lying with him. There was a time she might have blushed at that thought. But she didn’t blush so much anymore.
Night fell fast this close to the equator, but the moon was a day off full and that had given her hope. Three hours’ flight and a landing by moonlight? She’d done that before, half a dozen times.

What she hadn’t reckoned on were the thick cumulus clouds rolling in from the Indian Ocean. She was under them now, halfway between the ceiling and the floor about two hundred feet below her. Flying star quadrants, covering ground above what she hoped was still the airfield at Dubaro. There were no lights. Italian pilots were so bored they would drop a bomb on a fella lighting a cheroot in his cupped hand. The terrain was featureless enough in daylight—arid, scrubby hills or thick jungle, especially this close to the coast. At night there was . . . nothing.

Blog Tour Guest Post: Daughters of the Night Sky by Aimie K. Runyan

Please join me in welcoming Aimie K. Runyan to Let Them Read Books! Aimie is touring the blogosphere with her new release, Daughters of the Night Sky, and I'm pleased to have her here today with a guest post about how she discovered the "Night Witches," the inspiration behind the novel.

A novel—inspired by the most celebrated regiment in the Red Army—about a woman’s sacrifice, courage, and love in a time of war.

Russia, 1941. Katya Ivanova is a young pilot in a far-flung military academy in the Ural Mountains. From childhood, she’s dreamed of taking to the skies to escape her bleak mountain life. With the Nazis on the march across Europe, she is called on to use her wings to serve her country in its darkest hour. Not even the entreaties of her new husband—a sensitive artist who fears for her safety—can dissuade her from doing her part as a proud daughter of Russia.

After years of arduous training, Katya is assigned to the 588th Night Bomber Regiment—one of the only Soviet air units comprised entirely of women. The Germans quickly learn to fear nocturnal raids by the daring fliers they call “Night Witches.” But the brutal campaign will exact a bitter toll on Katya and her sisters-in-arms. When the smoke of war clears, nothing will ever be the same—and one of Russia’s most decorated military heroines will face the most agonizing choice of all.

Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ IndieBound    

Finding Inspiration

by Aimie K. Runyan

The origin story of Daughters of the Night Sky wasn’t the romantic tale you hear about from other writers. It didn’t come to me in a dream or a vision. It wasn’t that thunderclap “aha!” moment that sent me scribbling in a mad dash. My first two books took place in 17th century Canada, which is not a time and place that many readers deliberately seek out (though they have enjoyed it when they happen upon them). I knew that if I wanted to boost my career, I needed to pick a story that compelled me that was from an era that would attract a larger readership. In an ideal world, I’d be able to write about 15th century court politics and become a mega-bestseller doing so, but the reality was that I need to create a readership before I could broach topics that were less familiar to the public. Right now, the early 20th century, especially the world wars, are a subset of Historical Fiction that is doing well, and I decided that would be the smartest place to hunt for inspiration. Thankfully, there is no shortage of great material to be mined from, and I could find something that really moved me as an artist.

So, as I was pondering what world war-era topics I could transform into a novel that fit those criteria, the last of the famed Night Witches, the Soviet female fighter pilots, passed away. She was a hot topic in the news cycles for a day or so, and I had several friends forward articles about her to me with subtle missives like “this could be the idea you’ve been looking for” or “WRITE THIS BOOK NOW.” Let it never be said I can’t take a hint. I shot off that idea, along with half a dozen others, to my amazing agent. She homed in on the concept right away and encouraged me to tackle the book. I began delving into research, and it wasn’t long before my main character emerged and weaseled herself into my affections. It isn’t until I have a main character in mind that I can really take ownership of a book, and she was a vibrant one who came to me very early in the process. I was able to find a publishing home for Katya even before the manuscript was finished, and it has been a thrill to see her story out in the world!

Daughters of the Night Sky is on a blog tour!

View the tour schedule ~ Add it to your shelves on Goodreads

About the Author:

Aimie K. Runyan writes to celebrate history’s unsung heroines. She is the author of two previous historical novels: Promised to the Crown and Duty to the Crown, and hard at work on novel #4. She is active as an educator and a speaker in the writing community and beyond. She lives in Colorado with her wonderful husband and two (usually) adorable children. To learn more about Aimie and her work, please visit www.aimiekrunyan.com.

Guest Post: The Circumstantial Enemy by John R. Bell

Please join me in welcoming John R. Bell to Let Them Read Books! I'm thrilled to have John here today discussing the inspiration behind his debut historical fiction novel, The Circumstantial Enemy, based on a true story!

When Croatia becomes a Nazi puppet state in 1941, carefree pilot Tony Babic finds himself forcibly aligned with Hitler’s Luftwaffe. Unbeknownst to Tony, his sweetheart Katarina and best friend Goran have taken the side of the opposing communist partisans. The threesome are soon to discover that love and friendship will not circumvent this war’s ideals. Downed by the Allies in the Adriatic Sea, Tony survives a harrowing convalescence before being shipped to a prisoner of war camp in America.  But with the demise of the Third Reich, he considers the kind of life that awaits him in the homeland under communist rule. Will he be persecuted as an enemy of the state for taking the side of Hitler? And then there is Katarina; in letters she confesses her love, but not her deceit… Does her heart still belong to him?

The Circumstantial Enemy is an energetic journey to freedom through minefields of hatred, betrayal, lust and revenge. Rich in incident with interludes of rollicking humor, it’s a story about the strength of the human spirit, and the power of friendship, love and forgiveness.

The Circumstance behind The Circumstantial Enemy

The Circumstantial Enemy was released in October 2017. There is a twist to the title; the novel happened to be written by a circumstantial author. Why do I categorize myself that way? For starters, I’d never felt a burning desire to write a book. That all changed with one potent statement from my daughter. Seventeen years ago she said, “If you don’t write it, Grandad’s story will be lost forever.” I’ll never forget the yearning in her eyes. Though in good health, Grandad was 80 years old at the time and he wasn’t about to be the first human being to live forever. The family had heard his tales over and over again – trials and tribulations of a young Croatian pilot coerced onto the wrong side of WWII.

My daughter made it clear that she wasn’t requesting a book; a record of the events stapled together would suffice. I reasoned that I was not a writer; that defense was feeble, partly because I had the time to write. My career as a CEO of a large company had ended, and I had embarked on consulting work that required a heap of travel and plenty of lonely nights in hotels. I also had to admit that preserving Grandad’s captivating story for his descendants was incredibly compelling. So began my journey as an author.

Thrilled by the opportunity, Grandad agreed to a host of interviews. I was no longer a passive listener. Rather, I treated our exchange as might a journalist – probing for details and questioning events that seemed overstated. The most interesting revelation was his frankness. He soon forgot the recorder was on, revealing more than ever before – some of it both shocking and disturbing. Between the sessions, I checked his facts to ensure the timelines were correct and life in POW camps on US soil were as he described. Simultaneously, I was reading relevant nonfiction books to better understand time, place, and prisoner predicament. 

When I began writing, I found myself thinking as might a novelist – the notion that fiction hinges on the characters and what they want. Grandad’s motivation was freedom from repression. A year later, I had completed his biography. With enough copies printed for the family and a few generations to come, I thought I was done as an author. Not so. I’d been infected by that burning desire to write.

Guest Post: Bringing a Forgotten Piece of History to Light by Judithe Little, Author of Wickwythe Hall

Please join me in welcoming Judithe Little to Let Them Read Books! Judithe's debut historical novel, Wickwythe Hall, will be published September 30, and I'm pleased to have her here today with a guest post about the little-known tragic incident that inspired her story. Read on, and enter to win a copy of Wickwythe Hall!

May 1940. The Germans invade France and the course of three lives is upended. Annelle LeMaire is a French refugee desperate to contact her Legionnaire brothers. Mabry Springs, American wife of a wealthy Brit, is struggling to come to terms with a troubled marriage and imminent German invasion. And Reid Carr, American representative of French champagne house Pol Roger, brings more than champagne to Prime Minister Winston Churchill.  Their paths entwine when Churchill and his entourage take refuge at Wickwythe Hall, the Springs’ country estate hidden from the full moon and German bombers beneath a shroud of trees. There, as secrets and unexpected liaisons unfold, Annelle, Mabry and Reid are forever bound by the tragedy they share. 

Inspired in part by an actual confrontation between the British and French navies in July 1940, Wickwythe Hall is a story of love, loyalty, and the heartrending choices one is forced to make during wartime.

Bringing a Forgotten Piece of History to Light

by Judithe Little

True or false?

On July 3, 1940, in an Algerian port, the British navy fired on and destroyed the fleet of their allies, the French,  killing over 1,000 French sailors.

It seems unbelievable, but it’s true, a tragic confrontation between friends that inspired my novel, Wickwythe Hall.

So how did two allies, who just days before fought side by side against the Germans, come to arms?
In May 1940, Hitler’s troops invaded France and quickly overpowered the French and British armies. In June, just one month later, France surrendered.

As part of the armistice terms, France agreed to turn over its fleet to the Germans. Most of the French ships were across the Mediterranean at Mers el-Kébir, an Algerian port. There, they had a terrible decision to make: surrender their ships to the Germans, who would likely use them against the British, or violate the terms of the armistice and continue to fight. By continuing to fight, there would be certain repercussions at home. The lives of the French sailors’ families were at stake.

To the British, the fate of the French fleet was also life or death. With the French surrender, the British were left fighting the war alone. The US wanted no part of it. President Roosevelt had promised that American boys wouldn’t be sent to fight foreign wars, and it was an election year. Great Britain was barely hanging on as it was. If the Germans got hold of the French ships, overwhelming naval power would be in their hands. The British would have no chance.

The Royal Navy raced to Mers el-Kébir to present the French with an ultimatum: continue fighting or destroy the ships. And if the French wouldn’t destroy the ships themselves—another violation of the armistice—the British would do it for them.

Guest Post: Drawing Inspiration from the Women Who Lived through the Third Reich by C.F. Yetmen, author of What is Forgiven

Please join me in welcoming C.F. Yetmen to Let Them Read Books! C.F. is celebrating the release of the second book in the Anna Klein series, What is Forgiven, and she's here today with a guest post about her real-life inspiration. Read on and grab the first book in the series, The Roses Underneath, for 99-cents!

The Anna Klein series

Wading through the suspicion, corruption, and uncertainty of 1945 Germany, Anna Klein clings to the hope for normalcy and returning to her pre-war life. But when her job as a translator for Monuments Man Captain Henry Cooper lands her in the position to right wartime wrongs, Anna realizes her future holds a much greater purpose.

What is Forgiven

At the end of 1945 in a shattered Germany, Anna Klein is faced with tough choices about her future. Her plum job working as a translator for Captain Henry Cooper, one of the American Monuments Men, means she has a house and an income, as well as hands-on access to some of the world’s most precious art. But her life is falling apart on all fronts: her family is displaced, the boy in her care is being sought by authorities, and she must resolve to finally end her marriage. When she realizes that someone has tampered with two important paintings taken from a Jewish collector—paintings she was charged with safeguarding—Anna is determined to solve the crime. But without hard evidence and no motive, she can prove nothing and as State Department big wigs threaten to shut down the Monument Men’s operation, she and her boss are under special scrutiny. As all signs begin to point to an inconvenient suspect in the crime, she must play it by the book to keep her job and return the art to its rightful owner, if she can find him.

Drawing Inspiration from the Women Who lived through the Third Reich 

by C.F. Yetmen

In 1945, my grandmother was a 28-year-old German woman with a five-year-old daughter. She was displaced, separated from her husband and her entire family, homeless, and destitute. Meanwhile, also in 1945, the US Army Monuments Men (officially the US Army Monuments Fine Arts and Archives Division) had in their possession the most valuable art collection, probably in the history of the world.

The idea for the Anna Klein series came to me when my interest in my grandmother’s real-life story converged with my interest in the Monuments Men’s race to save art during the war.

World War II is the most studied and storied of all wars, but there is very little information on what ordinary German women went through. How do they care for their kids, get food, keep their families safe, and deal with the necessities of life? What do ordinary women do to survive the horror of a war like the ones the Nazis waged on Europe? We know more and more about the stolen art from that time but still so little about the women who lived through the experience of the Third Reich.

My grandmother died in 1998 and only shared small snippets of that time with me. Like many of her generation, she wouldn’t talk about it. When I was researching The Roses Underneath, the first book in the series, my mother very gently introduced the subject with the few of my grandmother’s friends who are still living. At that point in 2010, some 70 years removed, they were ready to speak with me. Sitting in comfortable living rooms sipping coffee from pretty cups, they told me horrifying stories that gave me nightmares. Stories of small acts of courage and unspeakable loss, of terror and devastation. And surviving.

The story of Anna Klein unfolded from there. I hope Anna grew into one of those sweet, old ladies like the ones I knew. They were survivors who were able to recapture some meaning and beauty in the life that came after.

The kindle edition of the first book in the trilogy, The Roses Underneath, is currently on sale for 99-cents!

Amazon  ~  Goodreads  ~ C.F. Yetmen's website

About the Author:

C.F. YETMEN is the author of The Roses Underneath, which received the 2015 IPPY Gold Medal for Historical Fiction, was named a 2014 Notable Indie Book by the Shelf Unbound Writing Competition, and was a 2014 Finalist in the  Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards. She lives and works in Austin, Texas. Visit www.cfyetmen.com.

Blog Tour Review: The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck

From the Back Cover:

Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold

Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined—an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards of Good Breeding.

Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.

First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin’s mother, the beautiful and naive Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resister’s wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.

As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband’s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war—each with their own unique share of challenges.

Written with the devastating emotional power of The Nightingale, Sarah’s Key, and The Light Between Oceans, Jessica Shattuck’s evocative and utterly enthralling novel offers a fresh perspective on one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Combining piercing social insight and vivid historical atmosphere, The Women in the Castle is a dramatic yet nuanced portrait of war and its repercussions that explores what it means to survive, love, and, ultimately, to forgive in the wake of unimaginable hardship.

My Thoughts:

The Women in the Castle opens with a prologue in which Germany's academic elite have gathered in celebration, and we are introduced to Marianne von Lingenfels and the von Lingenfels castle, a charming relic that has been used only for annual parties but that will soon become a refuge and a lifeline for the wives of the men sequestered in Albrecht von Lingenfels's study plotting the downfall of Adolph Hitler. Seven years and one failed assassination attempt later, World War II has just ended, and Marianne, now a traitor's widow, makes it her mission to find the wives and children of her husband's co-conspirators, heroes in her eyes, and bring them to safety.

Though she is only able to find two, Ania, a woman she'd never met, and Benita, the young wife of Marianne's childhood best friend, she gathers them and their children and brings them to the castle, where she hopes to keep them safe in the dangerous post-war climate, and where she hopes they will all be able to rebuild their lives together. None of these women have been untouched by the war, although Marianne, as a wealthy member of the aristocracy, has not had to suffer the physical depravities or face the daily fight for survival that the others have, and she soon realizes that coaxing these women into forming a new family with her will not be as easy as she'd hoped. Through food shortages, illness, the Russian and US occupations, and the bands of discharged soldiers and former prisoners roaming the countryside, Marianne desperately attempts to hold them all together, but she is eventually forced to admit that she can't force her fellow survivors to follow her path, that she must let them each come to terms with the war and their roles in it in their own way, and that they must each determine their own future.