Two thousand jobs have been lost and dozens more libraries are threatened…but it’s not just the jobs. It’s the community and all that a library offers – a warm space with access to knowledge in all its forms, help with job applications, play groups that introduce kids who might otherwise not even own a book to the joys of reading, events and workshops for older people (I’ve led several, helping them capture their stories for themselves and their families)…all of it provided by properly trained librarians, if you’re lucky, or keen volunteers.

A library is a doorway to another world. It offers opportunity and hope to the most deprived communities as well as safety and a place to go when there is nowhere else. Absolutely anyone can use their local library, from the middle-class mum with tiny toddlers who is tearing her hair out to the pensioner in the corner who might otherwise speak to no-one else all that week.

With school libraries also decimated, public libraries provide a place to do homework and an alternative to an empty house or cold, wet streets. I know so many people who have had to overcome adversity to get to where they are today and almost every single one of them cites their library as a crucial factor at some point in their young life. And yet it is the most deprived communities, according to the government’s indices of deprivation, that are four times more likely to lose a library. We must not just reverse this downward trajectory; we have to rebuild more and even better libraries not only for future generations but for all those right now who desperately need one.

That pic above? It’s me in a library, talking not just about my books but about writing, encouraging my audience to explore it in any way they wish. As part of my role at the Crime Writers’ Association, I’m about to start helping with National Crime Reading Month which works in partnership with libraries to bring the best of the genre to an even wider audience. We can all help in ways big or small.

Get involved in local campaigns or support the Library Campaign: https://librarycampaign.com/

Come along to a National Crime Reading Month event: https://crimereading.com/

Attend other events too – your local library will happily tell you about them – and help preserve something far too precious to lose.

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It’s advice – or a diktat – that I’m sure confuses many aspiring writers. Easy enough if it’s a romcom you’re writing and you’ve ridden the rollercoaster of at least one romantic hiccup (who hasn’t?). But what if you want to write a police procedural and haven’t so much as stepped inside a police station, never mind murdered someone? Of course you can carry out extensive research, and you should, but I believe the best thing you can bring to any story is your own truth.

We humans experience the same sorrows and joys in one form or another. Yes, even those who apparently lead a charmed life. Some of us are lucky enough to get through it unscathed apart from the odd minor scrape or bruise to the soul. Others survive unimaginable horrors. Or don’t. And yet we all want the same things – love, inner peace, a sense of fulfilment. For our children, if we have them, to achieve those too and for those we care about to be safe and happy. Simple desires, perhaps, and yet they are often so hard to achieve.

For the past few years, I’ve been writing a series of books set in WW2. I’ve plunged up to my elbows in researching every detail, including the real-life stories of people who were so brave it brought me to tears at times and who lived with every atom of their beings even amid war. I started those books at a time in my life which was so terrifying I thought it might break me. It didn’t and that’s partly due to the courage staring me in the face every day as I wove their stories into my own.

The latest book in my series, If I Can Save One Child, is possibly the closest to my own experience. It’s the story of the escape lines which helped downed airmen and civilians to get out of occupied France, taking them by sea and over the Pyrenees into Spain. The women and men who ran these lines were extraordinary, risking their lives every day to save others, some of whom had to leave behind everything and everyone they’d ever known to get to freedom.

I was painfully aware as I wrote of the echoes of this we see today, with families fleeing war-torn countries, also risking their lives and those of their children to trek across mountains and cross seas to get to safety, never knowing what would happen next. I understood their fear only too well.

When I started this book, I’d just lost everything I had, including the home where I’d fought for seven years to save my daughter’s life. I’m now living hundreds of miles away in a tiny cottage with what I could salvage of our possessions locked away in storage. What’s not locked away are my memories or the emotions I experienced and still do.

I am not for one minute suggesting that I had to flee for my life in the way that my characters did, or as people do every day across the world, although it came close. What I do know is that I brought as much of my own experience as I could to the book, infusing my characters and the story with the desperation and heartbreak that I felt, as well as the fierce love my protagonist, Elisabeth, feels for those she has to save, no matter what.

I also brought the courage I’d learned from those people I came across in my research, the same courage which saw me through the long years it took to save my own child. So yes, in a way I wrote what I knew and that’s how you can do it too. Begin with the shared experience, the touchpoints of commonality that we all have and then dig deeper into your own life to bring that to the page, infusing it into your characters so they sing with real life.

It can leave you raw with remembering. To my mind, that’s a good thing. The more you bring to the surface, the better. I firmly believe that story is our greatest healer. It can touch people in a way that strikes a very deep chord. Story is, after all, our ancient way of communicating and of learning as well as of processing trauma. It’s how our ancestors passed on the myths and tales that reflect love and loss, pain as well as passion, teaching the lessons we all need to learn.

From writing my own stories I have learned to be undaunted in the face of overwhelming danger. To always have faith, no matter what. It doesn’t really matter what you believe in so long as you believe in something…especially yourself. Every story you tell will reflect you in some way whether you like it or not.

If you are brave and tell that story with everything you have, good and bad, it translates into the kind of truth readers can sense, in the same way the ancients did sitting around their campfires. You will then have passed on to them the greatest gift you can give another person – the reassurance that they are not alone. That their hopes and fears are shared by us all. That we are all part of the same story, told over and over, bringing solace and understanding to the human heart.

This was originally published on the excellent site Writing.ie, a superb magazine for writers and readers: https://www.writing.ie/interviews/if-i-can-save-one-child-by-amanda-lees/

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And the omens are good.

We have 17 five-star reviews from the preview readers…

A nice chunk of preorders…

But you never know.

So what am I doing aside from all the promo stuff on social media and chugging coffee?

Writing, of course.

I’m already 60 pages into the next book, a psychological thriller, so it feels weird to suddenly pivot and go back to those other characters and their story. And it really is their story now.

That’s the thing with writing a book – you spend months and even years creating these characters, fleshing them out, putting them through hell and taking them to heaven (sometimes literally) only to abandon them once the final proofs are done.

I’ve carried some characters over from one book to the next, watching over them like a fond parent. I’ve fallen in love alongside them, led them through danger and out the other side. Some I’ve even killed off…although I’ve never killed the dog.

Like any good parent, I’ve then let go so they can soar on their own. That’s what you have to do with anything you write if it’s ever going to breathe.

Give it life then give it wings. Hand it over to the world. If the world loves it back then great. If not, carry on writing.

It’s not your job to convince or cajole readers into loving it or you. You’re there to tell a story, hopefully a great one.

Get it right and it will resonate with your audience. Get it wrong and you can always pick yourself up and write another one. But don’t, whatever you do, give up.

I certainly haven’t. Through immense, life-shattering events, writing was my solace and latterly my saviour. It’s the one thing I can do when life is crashing in on me, as it has at times.

I learned a lot about courage from the characters I write about in my WW2 series and I do my best to emulate the people whose stories I retell.

With that in mind, I’m taking a few moments today to celebrate (OK, maybe an entire evening with pizza in a friend’s field). Writing a book is an achievement. Writing five in twenty months is insane and also glorious. A bit like my life.

The lesson here? Keep writing. No matter what. Tell the best story you can. It’s all you can do.

You can read If I Can Save One Child here

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Marie Christine was half-Latvian, born there to an English father, a correspondent for the London Times, and a Latvian mother. When Russia annexed Latvia in 1940, her family lost their home and lands and her mother and sister fled to Sweden. At the time, Marie Christine was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris and, when the Germans occupied the city, she was sent to Besançon internment barracks where she nursed British prisoners of war and helped them escape into unoccupied territory. Sadly, Marie Christine received little thanks for her kindness, with one young prisoner she helped to escape France describing her afterwards as “one of the expert liars of the world.”

The hostility she provoked in some might be explained by the fact she had been brought up in a foreign country and had an intensely private nature which no doubt aroused suspicion. She was also a stunningly beautiful blonde who was both witty and intelligent. Stanley Woolrych, commandant at Beaulieu SOE training centre, commented, “I should hate to be deprived of Fifi’s reports, which are as entertaining as they are acute.” An article remains in the National Archives which displays her talent for writing, and which was written to bolster her cover as a French journalist going by the name of Christine Collard.

Her cover story enabled her to travel around the UK testing agents in various scenarios, being sprung on them by surprise before deploying her exceptional skills. In one instance, she said of a promising young Belgian agent, José Tinchant, that, “by the evening I had learned practically all there was to know about him,” which effectively ended his career with SOE. Agent Fifi’s work was invaluable both to SOE and national security.  After all, if an agent was so garrulous in the face of temptation, they would be a danger to themselves and to others in the field. As such, she took it seriously and was evidently fair-minded in her judgment, although she could also apparently be stubborn and at times stroppy.

Those qualities stood her in good stead in her work as well as when she began to attend postmortems at Beaulieu, confronting the agents she had hitherto tested. All of this I used in writing my latest book in which the character of Christine is based largely on Agent Fifi. As I always say, I never base a character on one person out of respect for them and their family although she was so exceptional that I couldn’t help but infuse her into everything.  However, I also used aspects of other agents and incidents based on real life, as well as my imagination, to flesh out the character that is Christine in my book.

Marie Christine was not the only agent provocateur who worked for SOE. There was another called Winifred Elizabeth Davidson who unfortunately had to be let go because, although married, she carried on seeing her subjects long after she had tested them. Despite the salacious gossip and supposition that inevitably went with Agent Fifi’s job, there is no evidence that she ever slept with her conquests. Indeed, the most intimate account of her activities is when she sat in a hotel room mending scarves for her target.

In addition to her work as a temptress, Agent Fifi also helped SOE with interrogation training and asked to be sent into the field as an agent in France. Given her capabilities and the fact she was multilingual, she was perfectly suited to the task and, towards the end of the war, her request was granted. All the while she was working as an agent, Marie Christine sent money to her mother and sister in Sweden whenever she could. After the war, she won compensation from the Soviet Union for the loss of her family’s property and went to live in the Wye Valley with her friend Jean Felgate, an ex-SOE intelligence officer, after Jean’s husband died. The two remained lifelong friends and Jean helped Marie Christine set up and run an animal charity and sanctuary in Latvia which still exists today.

Marie Christine Chilver was only twenty years old when the Germans occupied Paris. Despite her youth and the fact she was separated from her family, she displayed the cool courage that was a hallmark of everything she did. There is no doubt that she was underestimated by many and revered by a few who truly understood the importance of her work and the unique brilliance with which she carried it out. I wanted the character of Christine to reflect this compelling woman who gained not just a place in my mind but in my heart.

I hope that the book will also form a part of her legacy even though it is fiction. As a nod to that legacy, I included the character of a dog named Betty who is based on my own rescue dog from Eastern Europe and who is named after my mother. One of the great joys of my job is that I can not only pay homage to the incredible people who fought in so many different ways during World War Two but also bring them back to life so that readers can understand the impossible sacrifices they made and the bravery with which they made them. Marie Christine Chilver, or Agent Fifi, deserves her place in history along with our utmost respect for everything she achieved. She helped bring us the peace and freedom we enjoy today and is remembered by those who knew her as ‘one of life’s real good people.’ There can be no more fitting epitaph.

This article was first published by the Historical Fiction Company https://www.thehistoricalfictioncompany.com/post/the-fabulous-agent-fifi-a-featured-spotlight-of-the-paris-spy-s-girl

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This is the 3rd book in the Resistance Series, but can be read as a standalone. I loved all of these books. The first one was The Silence Before Dawn, followed by Paris at First Light and now this one The Midwife’s Child.

 

 

Auschwitz in 1945-Maggie is in Auschwitz as a doctor, following Dr. Mengele’s orders, which is very hard as he is a Nazi. She is a resistance fighter who was in prison for her actions. One day she delivers a baby and the mother is dying. Her last wish as she pleads with Maggie’s is to “Save my baby. Find her father. And reunite them.” Dr. Mengele wants the little girl because she has blue eyes and he does experiments. Maggie must do everything in her power to get little Leah out of the camp.

 

 

Then the march begins, and Maggie along with others manage to escape in the hands of soldiers from the Red Army. Captain Jamie Maclean rescues them and will do everything in his power to help Maggie get Leah to her father. He realizes he is in awe of Maggie and feelings develop.

 

 

While on the search for Antoine, the father of little Leah she finds out Mengele has escaped and she knows he has something that was left behind that can prove what he and other Nazis did to the people of the camp.

 

 

This novel has intrigue, depth and had me up super late as I was thoroughly engrossed to find out if Leah would be reunited with her father in time and if Dr. Mengele would be brought to justice. I highly recommend this novel as well as the others in the series.

#themidwifeschild, #amandalees, #bookouture, #stamperlady50, #bookstagram, #booksconnectus, #bookreview

5

 

 

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The book is partly a love letter to the ordinary women and men whose courage in the face of overwhelming odds was extraordinary. They operated undercover, often alone, fighting one of the most ruthless enemies this world has ever seen. They died alone too.  It was that quiet, lonely courage that called out to me across the years. You know some of their names. Others are less familiar. I devoured all their stories, not just those of SOE agents but the members of the Resistance and of the American OSS. They had one thing in common – a strength and spirit that was all too human. At a time when we need genuine heroines and heroes more than ever, these people inspired me as I hope they will inspire you.

While writing it, I had to overcome odds in my own life that, although nothing like those faced by the characters in the story, still felt insuperable. Thinking of them, and drawing on their courage, kept me going. As I explored the stories of the real-life characters on whom they are based, and the events that are often little-known but pivotal to the peace we enjoy today, I realised that this had to be a series. There was just too much to tell, too many tales of daring and acts noble and otherwise to share. I was also in love with my characters and remain so, flaws and all.

The split-second choices they had to make were truly life or death.  I tried to imagine how I would act in the same situations, remaining composed enough to pretend the radio equipment I was carrying strapped to a bicycle was actually an x-ray machine while being questioned by the SS or marching in to demand the release of my men from a police station, claiming that the Allied invasion was imminent. I have based scenes in the book on both of those incidents and many more I discovered through poring over first-hand accounts, documents and notebooks, sometimes translating from the French, that allowed me to see things through the eyes of those who had actually lived and died as résistants and secret agents.

Aside from SOE, there were also spies operating from the OSS, the precursor to the CIA, MI5 and the CIC, or American counterintelligence corps. Underpinning all their actions were their separate agendas which became more apparent as the war progressed. I wanted to give a flavour of that while keeping the pace of the story going and the reader on a rollercoaster ride that gives a sense of the turbulence through which my characters lived.

I didn’t want to flinch from the cruelty that was inflicted on them either. They endured torture and violence on a scale most of us cannot imagine. The vast majority never cracked, giving their fellow agents the time and opportunity to get away. That loyalty and friendship was also something that I wanted to bring out for my readers. It was the kind of intense camaraderie you can only forge under extreme circumstances and, of course, led to love affairs as well. War was a time when people fell in love fast, never knowing if there would be a tomorrow. My characters reflect that along with the friendships that often lasted a lifetime.

As such, I wanted them to form their own, separate clandestine unit, divorced from any of the official ones that were operating at the time so I could give them even more freedom to take enormous risks and dare where others could not, or would not, go. There were, in fact, several clandestine units like that, which meant I could stick to historical accuracy while making the series even more of a cracking read. I also wanted to honour the people who are important to me so named several of the characters after them while others were nods to some of those who gave so much to free France, and the rest of the world, from the horrors of war.

Apart from them, I always kept my dad, and my fabulous Scots‑Irish mother who ran hospitals in the jungle in Sarawak as well as in Hong Kong, in my mind as I wrote. They and the people I met as a child never failed to inspire me, pioneers who thought nothing of crossing oceans to serve in distant lands and who never spoke of what they had done in war and peacetime. They really don’t make them like that any more but I hope I brought them to life again through The Silence Before Dawn and the other books in the series.  And then there is the real-life love story that lies at the heart of it. I wrote this book for someone in particular as well as for all of you. It’s the love story that forms the thread that runs through all of the books, culminating in what might be either heartbreak or happiness. You’ll have to wait for the rest of the series to find out. It all begins with The Silence Before Dawn and I hope you love it as much as I loved writing it.

This was first featured on https://writing.ie

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These newly-weds have dressed up for their wedding photo but they’re not smiling…

And for good reason: their union was sealed at Auschwitz – the only wedding known to have taken place in the death camp. Rudolf Friemel, an Austrian communist who resisted the Nazis, met his Spanish wife Margarita Ferrer Rey in Spain after going there to fight with the International Brigades in 1936 against General Franco’s fascists during the Spanish Civil War.

He was sent to Auschwitz in 1942 after returning home. Margarita was allowed to travel to Auschwitz from Vienna for the wedding with their son – who was born in 1941 – and Friemel’s father. The marriage was registered at 11am on March 18, 1944, as the slaughter at the camp reached its peak. Friemel was allowed to wear civilian clothes and let his hair grow for the occasion, and a cell was made available to the couple for their wedding night in the camp brothel. But their happiness was short-lived.

Rudolf Friemel was hanged in December 1944 for helping to organise an escape attempt. The camp was liberated a month later. All his wife and child – who moved to France after the war – were left with were his heartbreaking letters and poems. Margarita died in 1987.

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Mala Zimetbaum, the first woman and the first Jewish woman to escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau, was born on January 26, 1918, in Brzesko, Poland In 1928, when she was ten years old, her family emigrated from Poland to Belgium, where they settled in Antwerp. Mala, a brilliant student, had to leave school because of the family’s economic situation—her father became blind—and work in a diamond factory

Mala was captured and sent to Auschwitz on September 17 1942. Of the 1,048 Jews who arrived in the camp on that day, 230 men and 101 women actually entered it after the selection. While in the camp, Mala met Edward (Edek) Galinski, and the two fell in love. Edek, born on October 5, 1923, was brought to Auschwitz as a Polish political prisoner. He arrived in the camp on June 14, 1940, in the first transport of Polish prisoners from Tarnow prison.

On June 24, 1944, Edek put on an SS uniform obtained from Edward Lubusch, an extraordinary SS man who helped prisoners, and Mala, who had managed to obtain a blank SS pass, dressed as a prisoner being led to work. Together, they escaped. On July 6, the two were captured by a border patrol in the mountains on the Slovakian border, returned to the camp, and placed in separate cells in Block 11, the punishment block. After interrogation and torture, they were taken to be hanged together.

As her sentence was read, Mala slit her wrists and slapped the SS officer who attempted to stop her. She was taken to the camp hospital in order to stop the bleeding. According to some eyewitness accounts, she died on the way to the crematorium. According to others, she was shot to death at the crematorium entrance. When Edek attempted to kick away the bench he stood upon, the SS present held him back. After his sentence was read, Edek shouted: “Long live Poland!” before the noose tightened around his neck.

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