Author Interview & Book Giveaway: ROSE SEILER SCOTT on THREATEN TO UNDO US

This week, we're pleased to welcome our first guest in 2016, author ROSE SEILER SCOTT with her latest release,  THREATEN TO UNDO US, set during the Nazi period in Europe. One lucky visitor will get a free copy of Threaten to Undo Us - this giveaway is restricted to North American residents only. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's author interview for a chance to win. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb.

As Hitler’s Third Reich crumbles and Stalin’s army advances, German civilians in the Eastern territories are forced to flee for their lives.

Leaving her dying mother, Liesel and her four young children hope they can make it from their home in Poland across the Oder River to safety. But all that awaits them is terror and uncertainty in a brutal new regime that threatens to tear Liesel’s family apart. With her husband a prisoner of war in Russia and her children enslaved, Liesel’s desire for hearth and home is thwarted by opposing political forces, leaving her to wonder if they will ever be a family again.

Based on a true story, Threaten to Undo Us offers a unique perspective on the Second World War, exposing historical events that took place in its enormous shadow.

**Q & A with Rose Seiler Scott**

There are lots of books on World War Two. What makes Threaten to Undo Us different and unusual?

The shelves at the library are filled with stories and memoirs from the Second World War. Most focus on the Holocaust or stories of Allied soldiers. Few books in English are written from the perspective of German protagonists and even less have been written on one of the largest expulsions in history that took place after the Second World War.

Where did you get the idea?

War stories, such as the Diary of Anne Frank, The Hiding Place and Unbroken, have always captivated me with tales of people surviving under the most trying circumstances. Over the years, I heard a number of anecdotes from my Dad’s side of the family and realized the story they told was nothing short of incredible. No-one else seemed to be curating their experiences, so when the family gathered and started talking about those days, I grabbed a scrap of paper and took notes.

What were some of the challenges you faced in research and what did you discover?

It was confusing to piece together the family narrative, because it didn’t seem to fit history and the framework of World War Two as I understood it. My Dad’s family is German, but they lived in Poland. Most of them were children at the time, but one of the things they repeatedly said, was they were in concentration camps. I wondered why. They weren’t Jewish. Family friends mentioned similar trials, but initially I could find no mention in any historical sources about this. Eventually I was led to a few crucial books about what happened after the war in communist Poland and East Germany. One of these books, John Sacks, An Eye for an Eye was all but blacklisted for the shocking expose’ that it was.

The rise of internet sources has been a boon for research and allowed me to find similar accounts and brief mentions of “labour” camps after the war. The history in a nutshell is this: Before the war, culturally German people lived all over Europe; in Poland, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), Hungary, Romania, etc. In the final days of the war, as Russian forces moved west into German occupied territory, Hitler took a defiant last stand which prevented the German army from retreating in enough time to get their civilians out in a safe, organized manner. Women, children and the elderly had to flee for their lives and many didn’t make it to safety. In the worst cases, there were massacres of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia and East Prussia. Those who survived and returned to their homes, were soon forced out and many were taken for interrogation and imprisonment in former concentration and prisoner of war camps, even if they had nothing to do with Nazi atrocities.

As a response to the devastation in Europe and as retribution to the Germans for their part in the war, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt determined at the conferences of Yalta and Potsdam to “repatriate” all Germans to Germany, even if they had never lived there. Given the mess Germany was in, it was ill-prepared to receive large numbers of refugees. As the communists took power, it became an opportunity for revenge, terror and slave labour in several East European countries.

A few years ago, I had reached a point in the writing the book where I felt it was necessary to go to Poland and Germany in order to write knowledgeably. I made the trip with my parents in 2009. Even though so much has changed since the war, I felt it really helped to actually be there. Certain scenes would not have come to life in the same way had I not gone.

How long did it take to write the book?

12 years, give or take. I was raising a family, volunteering at my children’s school and regularly suffering with migraine headaches. I was frustrated by the lack of information, set it aside for a while a few times.  

How much of the story actually happened and how much is fiction?

Though the book is based on the true story, the decision to go with fiction made it more representative of a whole group of people and created an even more compelling narrative. Events have been imagined, re-imagined and embellished, but for the most part the plot is what really happened. I won’t say too much more, but the more unbelievable an event in the book sounds, the more likely it is to be true! Truth really is stranger than fiction, but fiction plays a role in telling the truth.

Sounds like a really heavy read. Is it a depressing book?

Yes and no. Yes. The book is about a family’s struggles under two totalitarian regimes. Bad things happen. Grown men have told me they were moved to tears.

No. I prefer avoiding graphic depictions of evil, violence and bad language. I also believe there is hope, even in the darkest of times and faith is organically woven as a theme into the story in a way that I think appeals to a broad audience.

What are you working on now?

I was seriously considering a story based on my English grandmother who also had a very interesting life, but people are asking for a sequel to Threaten to Undo Us. Hopefully it won’t take me 12 years this time! 

See the book trailer:

Learn more about author Rose Seiler Scott
Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/Rose-Seiler-Scott/e/B00UO1SL7E

Author Blog: www.roseseilerscott.com

Facebook Author page: https://www.facebook.com/roseseilerscottauthor/

Twitter: @RoseSeilerScott
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13942641.Rose_Seiler_Scott

www.roseseilerscott.com

Excerpt Thursday: THREATEN TO UNDO US by Rose Seiler Scott

This week, we're pleased to welcome our first guest in 2016, author ROSE SEILER SCOTT with her latest release,  THREATEN TO UNDO US, set during the Nazi period in Europe. Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the story. One lucky visitor will get a free copy of Threaten to Undo Us - this giveaway is restricted to North American residents only. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's post or Sunday's author interview for a chance to win. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb.

As Hitler’s Third Reich crumbles and Stalin’s army advances, German civilians in the Eastern territories are forced to flee for their lives.

Leaving her dying mother, Liesel and her four young children hope they can make it from their home in Poland across the Oder River to safety. But all that awaits them is terror and uncertainty in a brutal new regime that threatens to tear Liesel’s family apart. With her husband a prisoner of war in Russia and her children enslaved, Liesel’s desire for hearth and home is thwarted by opposing political forces, leaving her to wonder if they will ever be a family again.

Based on a true story, Threaten to Undo Us offers a unique perspective on the Second World War, exposing historical events that took place in its enormous shadow.

**An Excerpt from THREATEN TO UNDO US**

Chapter 1

    1945

 Ernst’s face was cast in darkness; his tall frame a shadow in the open doorway.
              “I’m in the army now,” he said, his solemn voice fading as he backed away into the night. “I can no longer give you my protection.”

 Submerged in the blackness of loss, paralyzed to reach out, Liesel pleaded to her husband, “Come back!” Her voice echoed off the wall. Simultaneously she heard the rumbling of a truck motor and a tinny voice on a bullhorn. “All German citizens of the Third Reich are to evacuate as  soon as possible. You are no longer under the protection of the German army.”

            Liesel’s eyes fluttered open and her conscious mind recalled that Ernst had left their home in Poland months ago and was missing in action, somewhere in Russia.

The blackout curtains were securely in place. A single gas lamp, dimly lit, cast a soft glow on the green tiles of the Kachelofen. On the hearth ledge of the large ceramic stove, a few sticks of kindling poked out of the wood box. Above the mantel the cuckoo clock ticked softly, its pendulum swinging gently back and forth in counterpoint to Liesel’s racing heart.

In the gloom, silent companions watched from the walls; Ernst in his Wehrmacht uniform and his brother attired in the black garb of the “Schutz-Staffel,” sepia silhouettes of Liesel’s parents and grandparents and a portrait of her children, taken near the beginning of the war.

Kurt and Olaf stood on either side of Liesel like miniature sentinels in the matching dark suits she had made for them. Edeltraud was only a baby sitting on Liesel’s lap, wearing a perfectly tailored coat and a ruffled hat. Rudy stood next to the chair, his face turned slightly as if his attention was elsewhere.

The announcement reverberated down the street. “Allied forces are advancing. You are no longer under the protection of the German army. All German citizens of the Third Reich, General Government, are to evacuate to the west.”

Startled, now fully awake, her heart pounded and icy fingers of terror crept over her. Reich citizens of the General Government of Poland. That meant her. Evacuate her home? With four young children? Thoughts swirling anxiously, she wondered how she would manage everything in her condition.

Pulling her sweater tight against the sudden chill of the room, she heaved herself out of the rocking chair she had fallen asleep in, knocking over a half empty glass of tea in the process. Amber liquid splashed on the braided throw rug and streamed out across the floor in several directions.

She felt the baby move within her. It would only be a few more weeks and she hoped for a girl, a sister for four-year-old Edeltraud. A girl wouldn’t be drafted into the army.

Liesel forced herself to take a deep breath. Words she had learned long ago came to mind and she whispered them to herself. “The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and are safe.” She repeated this a few times until the panic receded enough for her to think.

A mental list began to take shape. She would need food, utensils, bedding, things for the baby. First she must tell the boys and enlist their help.

She put on her coat and headed out to the barn. The warm smell of hay and manure enveloped her with heavy sweetness. Kaspar brushed up against her leg, meowing softly. Kurt was mucking out one of the stalls, while Olaf sat on the stool milking Wande.

“Mutti? Wass is loss?” Eleven-year-old Kurt replied, his voice mirroring the tone of his mother’s.

“Jungen, we will have to leave quickly.” She swallowed, choking on the enormity of her task

“Where are we going?” asked Kurt.

Olaf, less than two years younger than his brother, patted the cow. “What about Wande and Kaspar?” His voice was brittle and his eyes glistened.

Liesel lowered her voice. They must not sense her alarm. “We are — taking a trip. We’ll take some chickens along if we can, but the rest will have to be left behind. Too many animals will slow us down,” she explained, thinking things through even as she spoke. “Olaf, make sure there is hay and grain for the animals while we are gone.. Leave their pens open.”

In case we don’t come back.

“But mother, I don’t want to go,” Olaf said. Standing up, he gripped the top of the cow’s pen. “Who will look after Wande and the goats if I am gone?”

 Feeding, milking, and grooming were his jobs and Liesel had observed how seriously he took these tasks. At butchering time he was scarcely to be found, unlike his older brother, who had always been fascinated by the process at an early age and was not at all bothered to wring a chicken’s neck or help pour the blood from a pig’s head.

Liesel squared her shoulders. There was no time for obstinate children right now. Looking him in the eye, she grasped his ears firmly, an action that was reserved for only the gravest offences. “You must do as you as you are told.”

Olaf’s eyes filled with tears and he looked down. “Yes, Mother.”

See the book trailer:

Learn more about author Rose Seiler Scott

Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/Rose-Seiler-Scott/e/B00UO1SL7E

Author Blog: www.roseseilerscott.com

Facebook Author page: https://www.facebook.com/roseseilerscottauthor/

Twitter: @RoseSeilerScott

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13942641.Rose_Seiler_Scott

www.roseseilerscott.com

Author Interview & Book Giveaway: Elinor Florence on BIRD'S EYE VIEW

This week, we're welcoming author Elinor Florence whose latest title is BIRD'S EYE VIEW. One lucky visitor will get a free copy of Bird's Eye View. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's author interview for a chance to win. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb. 

Rose Jolliffe is an idealistic Canadian farm girl who joins the air force in World War Two and becomes an interpreter of aerial photographs, searching for bomb targets on the continent. Working with hundreds of intelligence officers at an English mansion, she spies on the enemy from the sky and makes several crucial discoveries. Her British commanding officer Gideon Fowler recognizes her almost supernatural skills, but can he be trusted?

Lonely and homesick, Rose finds comfort in letters from the home front. As she grows disillusioned by an unhappy love affair and the destruction of war, tragedy strikes, and her world falls apart. Rose struggles to rebuild her shattered life – and finds that victory ultimately lies within herself.

**Q&A with Elinor Florence**

 

 

What makes your historical novel Bird’s Eye View unusual?

Two reasons: Firstly, it’s the only novel ever written in which the protagonist is a Canadian woman in uniform. The contribution of women who served in all the Allied forces during wartime -- American, British, or Canadian -- has been sadly overlooked. Secondly, my heroine is an aerial photographic interpreter. She studies aerial photographs, searching for bomb targets. This was an essential part of Allied Intelligence, but we hear only about the code-breakers at Bletchley Park.

 

 

How did you become interested in this topic?

I grew up on a former airfield used to train aircrew for the British Commonwealth Air Training Program. In fact, the house where I grew up was a former barracks building. I could identify with the farm boys and girls who couldn’t wait to join the air force. It seemed like such a romantic, exciting thing to do, especially since women were accepted into the armed forces for the first time during World War Two.

Later, when I started my career as a newspaper reporter, I saw an old picture in a magazine of a woman wearing an air force uniform, studying an aerial photograph with a magnifying glass. I immediately thought: “I could have done that!” I didn’t research and write my fact-based book until later, but that image stayed in my head.


In real life, where did the photo interpreters work?

Just like the real interpreters, my fictional heroine works in a gorgeous mansion called RAF Medmenham, located not far from London on the banks of the Thames River. It was built out of white chalkstone, and locals called it “The Wedding Cake.” It’s now a four-star luxury hotel called Danesfield House. There’s a photograph of it on the back cover of my book. Danesfield House was in the news recently because George and Amal Clooney held their wedding reception there!


What qualifications did a photo interpreter have?

Interpretation was hard work, almost like learning another language. As well as math skills and scrupulous attention to detail, they needed a sort of sixth sense. Of course they only had black-and-white photos, so they learned to distinguish different textures of foliage and soil and metal and concrete. I like to say the interpreters had to recognize Fifty Shades of Grey!


Were the interpreters mostly male?

The unit began with forty interpreters; by the end of the war, there were six hundred interpreters, more than half of whom were women. Women proved to be especially good at it, because of their attention to detail. Of course their activities were top-secret. So the women had to overcome the male viewpoint that they couldn’t keep their mouths shut!


What was their most important discovery?

There were many, but the most famous was made by a woman who found the first jet-propelled weapon of mass destruction on a photograph. Today we call it a cruise missile. The Allies knew that the Germans were up to something, but they didn’t know what. The photo interpreters were ordered to look for “anything queer.” Finally, British interpreter Constance Babington Smith, nicknamed Babs, discovered the flying bomb on an aerial photo. It looked like a tiny aircraft with wings. Thanks to her discovery, the Allies were able to wipe out the German experimental station.


Almost everyone says Bird’s Eye View made them cry. Why is it so moving?

While writing for Reader’s Digest, I specialized in what were called “the heart stories.” I learned to recognize those tidbits that tugged at the heartstrings. In researching my novel, I interviewed many people who lived through the war, and they told me about their loves and their losses and their sorrows.

 

One thing that really stood out was the homesickness. Imagine being isolated from your loved ones for years! It was even worse for the Americans and Canadians because they couldn’t go home on leave. Their only connection was through letters, so I included many letters from home in Bird’s Eye View. My heroine simply longed to see her own country again -- a primal emotion that comes straight from the heart.    

 

 

About the Author

Elinor Florence is a career journalist who has written for daily newspapers and magazines including Reader’s Digest. Like her heroine, Elinor grew up on a prairie farm in Saskatchewan and now lives in the Rocky Mountain resort of Invermere, British Columbia. Married with three grown daughters, her passions are village life, flea markets, and old houses.

Find Elinor Florence on the Web:

Author Website:

http://www.elinorflorence.com

Author Blog: Wartime Wednesdays

http://www.elinorflorence.com/blog

Facebook: Elinor Florence – Author

https://www.facebook.com/elinorflorenceauthor?ref=hl

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/florencewriter

Goodreads:

 https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7356496.Elinor_Florence

Pinterest:

https://www.pinterest.com/elinorflorence/

Amazon Author Central:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00J8S01BS

Where You Can Find Bird’s Eye View:

Amazon -- http://www.amazon.com/Birds-Eye-View-Elinor-Florence/dp/1459721438/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426014833&sr=8-1&keywords=Bird%27s+Eye+View

Also available at www.amazon.ca and www.amazon.co.uk

Excerpt Thursday: BIRD'S EYE VIEW by Elinor Florence

This week, we're welcoming author Elinor Florence whose latest title is BIRD'S EYE VIEW. Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the story. One lucky visitor will get a free copy of Bird's Eye View. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's post or Sunday's author interview for a chance to win. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb. 

Rose Jolliffe is an idealistic Canadian farm girl who joins the air force in World War Two and becomes an interpreter of aerial photographs, searching for bomb targets on the continent. Working with hundreds of intelligence officers at an English mansion, she spies on the enemy from the sky and makes several crucial discoveries. Her British commanding officer Gideon Fowler recognizes her almost supernatural skills, but can he be trusted?

Lonely and homesick, Rose finds comfort in letters from the home front. As she grows disillusioned by an unhappy love affair and the destruction of war, tragedy strikes, and her world falls apart. Rose struggles to rebuild her shattered life – and finds that victory ultimately lies within herself.

**An Excerpt from BIRD'S EYE VIEW**

I leaned over and studied the photograph once again. I had been working on it for two hours, yet I couldn’t interpret the strange pattern of light-coloured circles against a darker background of grass.

I was becoming adept at identifying surfaces based on tone and texture alone. Earth, grass, sand, rocks — each had its own distinctive shade of grey. By now I was skilled at reading a photograph, squeezing out every drop of information like the pulp of an orange.

What had made those strange spheres? No weapon or vehicle that I recognized. I stuck out my lower lip and blew air upwards over my flushed face.

Fowler came into the room and stopped beside my desk. “Everything all right here, Jolliffe?” It had become a private joke, his using the same words every day.

I looked up at him and smiled. “Yes, sir, except for the heat. The problem is the exposure on this photograph. Maybe if it were darker I could make out some detail inside these circles. I’ll check the others and see if they’re any sharper.”

“Very good, Jolliffe.” He smiled back at me and I felt a frisson of excitement. Don’t be a fool, I told myself. Lately I couldn’t help noticing that even in the midst of my deepest concentration, if Fowler walked past my desk it took me a few minutes to recapture my focus.

I went down to the print library and told the duty clerk what I needed.

“Sorry, Assistant Section Officer. The prints are checked out to someone else.”

“Is anyone on duty in the darkroom?”

“No. We aren’t expecting any new photos tonight. Mrs. Hamilton said to call her if anything else arrived.”

“Well, don’t bother her. Just give me the negatives. I’ll pop into the darkroom and make a print. It should only take me twenty minutes.”

“If you’re quite sure —” She eyed the stripe on my sleeve and handed over the negatives.

I turned on the red warning light outside the entrance to signify no admittance, and slipped between the heavy floor-length curtains. Gosh, it was sweltering! The interior room without windows was like a steam bath. The reddish-coloured safe light seemed to pulse with an unearthly glow.

I found the negative and slipped it into the enlarger. Almost faint from the heat, I made a decision. Quickly I slipped off my shoes, then my skirt. I pulled my tie over my head, and unbuttoned my shirt. Finally, off went my stockings and garter belt, leaving me in my underwear.

I felt lighter and cooler, my bare feet damp with sweat on the stone floor. I lifted a piece of paper out of the cardboard box and slipped the edge into my mouth, identifying the emulsified side when it stuck to my upper lip. After sliding the paper between the sheets of glass, I flicked the switch on the enlarger.

I burned in those puzzling circles by allowing the light to fall on them directly, protecting the rest of the photo by dodging my hand back and forth under the beam, and slipped the print into a tray full of developing fluid.

While I watched the dark image rise from the white paper, I splashed clean water from the rinsing tray over my shoulders and throat. It felt delicious on my hot skin. When the photo was ready I picked it up with a pair of rubber tongs and slid it into the tray of fixing solution.

As I gazed at the image, my mind wandered. Suddenly I had one of those rare sensations of flight. I almost felt myself lift physically from the floor and soar high above the tray, seeing it through a bird’s eyes.

Of course! I knew what those circles were — nothing to do with any type of warfare. “It’s goats!” I said aloud, and laughed. The circles were the grazed patches made by goats on tethers, walking around the stakes in mathematically precise spheres.

I returned to my own skin and my feet touched the stone floor just as a shaft of light entered the darkroom. I whirled around. Gideon Fowler was standing inside the blackout drapes, staring at me. For a couple of seconds both of us were transfixed.

“Terribly sorry,” he muttered, before vanishing again.

I looked down at myself. My arms and shoulders glistened with drops of water, gleaming in the rosy light. My modest white cotton brassiere and underpants were more revealing than any bathing suit. I wished I had been wearing my standard issue bloomers, but they had been replaced long ago.

Why hadn’t he seen the warning light? Everyone at the station down to the lowliest cleaner knew that opening the curtains could ruin the precious film. I scrambled into my uniform, my temperature rising again.

Quickly I ran a rubber squeegee over the photo and stepped outside the darkroom. I looked up and saw that the warning light overhead had burned out. I marched down the hall and handed the negatives back to the filing clerk.

“Did Flight Officer Fowler find you, ma’am?”

“Yes, he did,” I replied, pretending to study the photograph in my hand. “The warning light outside the darkroom needs replacing. Could you do it right away, please?”

I walked down the long hallway, my footsteps slowing as I approached the camouflage room. Outside the door I squared my shoulders, then went straight to my desk without glancing left or right. Sam’s face was glued to his stereoscope and Fowler was sitting with his back to me, reading a file held open on his lap. No one spoke for the rest of the shift.

About the Author

Elinor Florence is a career journalist who has written for daily newspapers and magazines including Reader’s Digest. Like her heroine, Elinor grew up on a prairie farm in Saskatchewan and now lives in the Rocky Mountain resort of Invermere, British Columbia. Married with three grown daughters, her passions are village life, flea markets, and old houses.

Find Elinor Florence on the Web:

Author Website:

http://www.elinorflorence.com

Author Blog: Wartime Wednesdays

http://www.elinorflorence.com/blog

Facebook: Elinor Florence – Author

https://www.facebook.com/elinorflorenceauthor?ref=hl

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/florencewriter

Goodreads:

 https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7356496.Elinor_Florence

Pinterest:

https://www.pinterest.com/elinorflorence/

Amazon Author Central:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00J8S01BS

Where You Can Find Bird’s Eye View:

Amazon -- http://www.amazon.com/Birds-Eye-View-Elinor-Florence/dp/1459721438/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426014833&sr=8-1&keywords=Bird%27s+Eye+View

Also available at www.amazon.ca and www.amazon.co.uk

Author Interview: C.F. Yetmen

This week, we're pleased to welcome author C.F. Yetmen with her latest novel, THE ROSES UNDERNEATH. The author will offer a free copy of The Roses Underneath to a lucky blog visitor.  Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's author interview for a chance to win. Here's the blurb.

August 1945, Wiesbaden, Germany. With the country in ruins, Anna Klein, displaced and separated from her beloved husband, struggles to support herself and her six-year-old daughter, Amalia. Her typing job at the Collecting Point for the US Army’s Monuments Men is the only thing keeping her afloat.

Charged with securing Nazi-looted art and rebuilding Germany’s monuments, the Americans are on the hunt for stolen treasures. But after the horrors of the war, Anna wants only to hide from the truth and rebuild a life with her family. When easy-going American Captain Henry Cooper recruits her as his reluctant translator, the two of them stumble on a mysterious stash of art in a villa outside of town. Cooper’s penchant for breaking the rules capsizes Anna’s tenuous security and propels her into a search for elusive truth and justice in a world where everyone is hiding something.

Praise for The Roses Underneath

“A fascinating tale of survival, intrigue, and Nazi looted art amid the ruins of 1945 Germany. It’s a world in which very little is what it appears to be and everyone has a story they don’t want to tell. The author exploits this place and time deliciously.”

James Kunetka, New York Times best selling author

“Fans of Alan Furst will be delighted with this debut novel from the perspective of WW II survivors as they dig themselves out of the rubble and face deprivation and dislocation under Allied command. Yetmen has created a fascinating and complex heroine torn between ‘good Germans and bad Germans’ and the Americans who struggle to occupy and heal a vanquished nation.”

Thomas Zigal, author of Many Rivers to Cross and The White League

“Yetmen turns the narrative of the Allied forces’ Monuments Men 180 degrees and gives us a German protagonist: a young woman who, with her daughter, has survived the war but now must figure out how to survive its aftermath. Yetmen rejects heroism and absolutes in favor of a more complex portrayal of postwar Germany and its American occupiers in which good can look like evil, evil can look like good, and no one is blameless. This page-turner from a talented new writer deserves a place on every historical fiction-lover’s bedside table.”

Kathy Leonard Czepiel, author of A Violet Season

**Author Interview: C.F. Yetmen**

What inspired you to write the book?

It was a collision of several ideas. The experiences of my grandmother and my mother after the war had always interested me, but I only knew little snippets of information. I knew my grandmother and mother were displaced, separated from my grandfather and that my grandmother got a job working as a secretary for an American officer. That idea had been floating around in my head for decades.  In my day job, I work with architects, writing about their work and helping them communicate their value to the public. And, I am a working mother. When I stumbled on the documentary The Rape of Europa one night on TV about five years ago, I was completely fascinated by the Monuments Men. I had never heard of them or their work. Many of them were architects, so that resonated with me. A few days later I was on a walk and pondering ideas for a novel. I asked myself, what do I know? All those ideas converged in a flash and I had my setting. Stephen King describes just such a flash of seemingly unconnected ideas coming together beautifully in his book On Writing. That’s how I got the idea.

How is your book different from the Monuments Men movie?

The book picks up where the movie leaves off. I was really interested in finding out what the Monuments Men did after the war. How did they safeguard, catalog, restore, preserve all the art they had rescued from the Nazis? And then how did they decide whom to return it to, because of course, art provenances are wrought with intrigue and greed. To me, that was the most interesting part. How do you do the right thing and finish the job honorably? And I know it wasn’t easy. There were a lot of influences and opinions swirling around their work, trying to sway their decisions. The stakes were very high.

Is anything in your book based on real life experiences?

Only very tangentially. My mother was born in 1940 in Germany and after the war my grandmother took her and my great-grandmother and fled west to escape the Russian occupiers in the eastern part of the country. My grandmother had to rebuild her life, and one of the things that saved her was her ability to speak English. Because of that, she was plucked off the street and hired to be a secretary to a colonel. She often said this saved her life. That’s where the real-life inspiration ends. I thought what if instead of working for a colonel, there was a woman, displaced with a young daughter, who worked for the Monuments Men?

Do you identify with any of the characters?

I suppose as a woman and a mother I identify with Anna’s instinct to protect her child. I also identify with Cooper’s perspective as an American. I guess to me, the thing I connect with most strongly is the space between them, between the German (or non-American) experience and the American one, since I often feel that I straddle that space myself.

What larger or universal themes does the book explore?

I was interested in exploring the experience of ordinary German women in World War II and, of course, the idea of collective guilt that is so often talked about. I was also thinking about how you put something back together that is so totally broken, as Germany was in 1945. Where do you start? How do you move forward? What do you carry with you and what do you let fall away? The work of the Monuments Men puts this in unique context. They are dealing with priceless art, which represents the very best of human accomplishment. But why is art worth saving, especially when so many lives have been destroyed in the most barbaric ways? And what is art’s true value?

Can you talk about your experience of switching from writing nonfiction to fiction and what that was like for you?

That’s a good question. I will say, some of the comments I got on my first draft were that it was too literal, too close to actual historical events, so I definitely had to loosen up and let the characters live their own lives. In my day job I write about place a lot, so the setting of the novel took on strong characteristics, because for me place is always an important part of a story. In that sense, my brand of non-fiction writing helped me. Of course, in 1945, the place became a character all its own, setting up all kinds of problems and challenges for the characters. In the end writing fiction was very liberating, once I got used to the feeling—but that took a while.

What project are you working on now?

My next novel in the series. I still have a lot of research that I did when the plot of this book was very different, so I am returning to that in the next book.

C.F. YETMEN is a writer and consultant specializing in architecture and design. She is co-author of The Owner’s Dilemma: Driving Success and Innovation in the Design and Construction Industry and a former publisher of Texas Architect magazine. The Roses Underneath is her first novel. Visit www.cfyetmen.com.

Also, learn more at:

http://www.cfyetmen.com/journal (Blog)

https://twitter.com/CFYetmen

www.facebook.com/cfyetmen

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7382337.C_F_Yetmen

http://www.pinterest.com/cfyetmen

http://amzn.to/LWR6Rw

Excerpt Thursday: The Roses Underneath by C.F. Yetmen

This week, we're pleased to welcome author C.F. Yetmen with her latest novel, THE ROSES UNDERNEATH. Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the story. The author will offer a free copy of The Roses Underneath to a lucky blog visitor.  Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's post or Sunday's author interview for a chance to win. Here's the blurb.

August 1945, Wiesbaden, Germany. With the country in ruins, Anna Klein, displaced and separated from her beloved husband, struggles to support herself and her six-year-old daughter, Amalia. Her typing job at the Collecting Point for the US Army’s Monuments Men is the only thing keeping her afloat.

Charged with securing Nazi-looted art and rebuilding Germany’s monuments, the Americans are on the hunt for stolen treasures. But after the horrors of the war, Anna wants only to hide from the truth and rebuild a life with her family. When easy-going American Captain Henry Cooper recruits her as his reluctant translator, the two of them stumble on a mysterious stash of art in a villa outside of town. Cooper’s penchant for breaking the rules capsizes Anna’s tenuous security and propels her into a search for elusive truth and justice in a world where everyone is hiding something.

Praise for The Roses Underneath

“A fascinating tale of survival, intrigue, and Nazi looted art amid the ruins of 1945 Germany. It’s a world in which very little is what it appears to be and everyone has a story they don’t want to tell. The author exploits this place and time deliciously.”

James Kunetka, New York Times best selling author

“Fans of Alan Furst will be delighted with this debut novel from the perspective of WW II survivors as they dig themselves out of the rubble and face deprivation and dislocation under Allied command. Yetmen has created a fascinating and complex heroine torn between ‘good Germans and bad Germans’ and the Americans who struggle to occupy and heal a vanquished nation.”

Thomas Zigal, author of Many Rivers to Cross and The White League

“Yetmen turns the narrative of the Allied forces’ Monuments Men 180 degrees and gives us a German protagonist: a young woman who, with her daughter, has survived the war but now must figure out how to survive its aftermath. Yetmen rejects heroism and absolutes in favor of a more complex portrayal of postwar Germany and its American occupiers in which good can look like evil, evil can look like good, and no one is blameless. This page-turner from a talented new writer deserves a place on every historical fiction-lover’s bedside table.”

Kathy Leonard Czepiel, author of A Violet Season

**An Excerpt from The Roses Underneath**

Emerging on the Adolfsallee, they turned left toward the Wiesbaden town center, Amalia taking off in a half-skip, half-run. People were out and about, beginning daily tasks of cleaning, clearing rubble, finding food, securing work or just walking the streets in search of something. A line of women—pails in hand—had already formed where the milk truck sometimes appeared. The Allied bombs had been comparatively gentle on Wiesbaden, but that was just a relative notion. Bombs were bombs. Anna watched Amalia jump over holes in the sidewalk, her green dress bouncing in the dust clouds she kicked up. This is the landscape of her childhood, Anna thought. Mountains of rubble and rivers of blood. The girl was only six and had seen so much misery and stomached horrible fear, and Anna worried that more was to come. The war had been over for three months already, but what had replaced it? What were they living in? A sort of provisional purgatory, she thought, with occupiers who had to sort the bad from the good, the guilty from the innocent, the past from the future. We are damned; we unleashed hell on the world. And now we Germans must make good. She thought this every day. But to make amends for monstrosities perpetrated in your name and with your complicity, even if it was coerced? Was it even possible?

“Mama, look.” Amalia was pointing at something on the ground and beckoning. As Anna approached, she saw what had caught Amalia’s eye. Gleaming in the sunlight was a large metal button, the kind found on a Loden jacket or a dirndl or some other traditional dress, the kind the Nazis had been so fond of the German Volk wearing. It was heart-shaped and stamped with a scroll pattern. “Can I take it?” whispered Amalia, her eyes beaming as if she had found buried treasure. Which, Anna thought, she had, in a way.

“Yes, you may,” said Anna, joining in the spirit. “What a prize.”

Amalia picked up the button, now black with grime and held it on her flat palm. “Can we wash it, Mama? So it will shine?”

“Yes of course, little Maus,” said Anna. “Now put it in your pocket and keep it safe. We need to hurry.”

Amalia slipped her hand into her mother’s and they walked on between the piles of stones that lay like sleeping prehistoric creatures along the street. Anna imagined them hibernating, waiting until they could be reanimated into something new, something hopeful. As they approached the Rheinstrasse, the bustle of the city flowed along the main thoroughfare and the Bonifazius church glowed in the morning sun, Gothic spires flanking its bombed out sanctuary like two sentries. The American MP directing traffic at the intersection whistled and motioned for them to cross. They turned and walked east into the sun, joining the people heading to whatever jobs they were lucky enough to have. Nearing the large, looming Landesmuseum, where the Americans had set up shop, they walked along the newly installed chain-link fence with the barbed wire on top until they came to the guard at the workers’ entry outside the rear courtyard. The sign read U.S. Army Monuments, Fine Art and Archives, and the young soldier standing at the entrance looked as earnest and rigid as a statue himself. Anna sat Amalia down on a bench next to the gate.

“Listen to me, Maus.” Anna squatted down. “Do you remember what I said? You wait here until I come out and get you. And what will you say if anyone asks you why you are here?”

Amalia exhaled and flatly recited the words: “My name is Amalia Klein. My Mutter ist Anna Klein. She ist in there. I wait for her?” She pointed at the building.

“Mother, not Mutter,” said Anna, stroking the blond hair that threatened to escape from Amalia’s braids. “Mother.”

“Mother,” said Amalia. She pulled the button from her pocket and studied it with scientific intensity.

Anna’s stomach clenched. She wished she had some choice other than leaving her daughter here, on a bench on the sidewalk. But she didn’t. “Look, Maus.” She pointed at the GI. “See that American? I bet he comes from Texas, from the Wild West. Maybe he is the sheriff of his town and he has a big horse and he keeps all the bad guys away. That’s probably why he’s standing guard here now. What do you think?”

They stole a glance at the bulldog of a GI. His face was young but worn and tired. His white MP helmet was balanced precariously on his head, which seemed too large for his short, square body. The name on his uniform said Long, which almost made Anna smile.

“So he’s going to need your help keeping bad guys out of the museum while Mama goes to work.” Anna turned Amalia to face the three-story building and pointed to the top floor. “Count three windows from the end and that’s where I’ll be. I’ll be watching you all the time while I am doing my job. Your job is to sit quietly here.”

“But how long will you take, Mama?”

“Not long, only until lunchtime. Do you promise you won’t move? You have Lulu to keep you company.”

A pile of trash rained down from an upper window. GIs and German workers dodged the periodic showers of debris, old blankets, mattresses, pieces of wood, and building materials. These were the remnants of the hundreds of displaced people who had sought shelter in the museum at the end of the war. Now it would house the new offices of the Americans they called the Monuments Men. Anna was not altogether sure what their job was, it seemed to have something to do with returning items to people. But they had needed English speakers and typists and to her great good fortune, she was adept at both.

C.F. Yetmen is a writer and consultant specializing in architecture and design. She is co-author of The Owner’s Dilemma: Driving Success and Innovation in the Design and Construction Industry and a former publisher of Texas Architect magazine. The Roses Underneath is her first novel. Visit www.cfyetmen.com.

Also, learn more at:

http://www.cfyetmen.com/journal (Blog)

https://twitter.com/CFYetmen

www.facebook.com/cfyetmen

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7382337.C_F_Yetmen

http://www.pinterest.com/cfyetmen

http://amzn.to/LWR6Rw