Dance of Resistance, The Josephine Baker Story, written by Catherine Johnson, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

    This is an astonishing story, all the more powerful for being true. 

    Catherine Johnson has already published with Barrington stoke two compelling stories of the lives of two pioneering black men, Olaudah Equiano who achieved freedom from slavery and recorded his own story, and Mathew Henson the Arctic explorer. Now we have the story of the breathtakingly brilliant and surprising black woman dancer, comic, actor, singer, spy Josephine Baker, here telling her own story.

    What a story it is! Wonderfully suited to a child readership because Josephine's huge show-business ambitions began in childhood, as did significant events that made her the woman she became. She became a live in maid with responsibility for a baby at the age of seven! Ran away from a sexually predatory boss at the age of thirteen ... then got married at that same age, and married again at fifteen! But all this time she would spend any money she could on going to see shows, and discovered that dancing in the street to ragtime music coming from a bar could earn her an audience and sometimes money. 

    We sweep on through a career of boldness and originality, wit, determination, hard work, a complex private life, and travel. You can look on Youtube to see Josephine in her glorious and daring costumes dancing her heart out. 

    But underlying all that is the stark realities of racial segregation in Josephine's home country, America. Even at the height of her fame, hugely rich and famous as lead attraction at Paris' Folies Bergere, a visit to America meant being turned away from hotels, not served in restaurants, bad reviews for shows. Shocking. 

    So she stayed loyal to France which treated her so much better than the US did. During World War Two she actively used her skills to spy for the French against the occupying Nazis, transmitting signals, smuggling documents, helping Jewish people escape, winning her top military honours from her adopted home country. 

    She was then active at a distance in the American Civil Rights movement. What a woman!

    A gorgeous book cover and an engrossing read.  

The Girl form Norway -- in praise of the online book event by Sheena Wilkinson

This will be a short post as I’m just getting over Covid, and right now I am trying to conserve energy for the Romantic Novelists’ Association annual conference – by the time this is posted, I’ll be there, all being well.

Having Covid is very relevant to this post. I’d always planned to write about the virtual book launch of Emma Pass’s wonderful WW2 romantic novel, The Girl from Norway, which was published last week. Emma had had a successful virtual launch for her previous novel, the RNA-shortlisted Before the Dawn, and was keen to repeat the experience. I was lucky enough to read an early version of the novel, and loved it, so I really wanted to help launch it, but I live in Northern Ireland, so I wouldn’t have been able to go to a conventional book launch.

In-person book launches are a wonderful way to bring lots of well-wishers together in one place. But a virtual book launch is a very special thing too.

When I logged on last Thursday, not only did I get to see and hear Emma and her editor talk about the book, but I also saw many friends from the world of books – some of whom I know from Charney and other author events, and whom I haven’t been able to see in real life for years. And – something you don’t get in real life events – some of them had brought their dogs and cats along! (My greyhound Stroller is distantly related to Emma’s greyhound Auburn – they’ve often met online, which it’s fair to say we are more excited about than they are.)

Emma has excellent technical and artistic skills (she designed my website!) and she put those to great use when she shared her screen to show us some fascinating objects from her research – some early radar equipment, which she had actually used, and magazines from the RAF men stationed on Unst. Later came the fiendish WW2/RAF/Shetland-themed quiz – great fun, with plenty of banter among the participants. 

 

This was a lovely, friendly, celebratory event. It felt different from an in-person book launch, of course, but definitely not a poor relation. Since lockdown, there has been a lot of discussion about the importance of online and hybrid events, from an accessibility point of view. I’m fortunate enough, normally, to be able to access in-person events, though I do spend more time travelling than I’d ideally like. But last Thursday, with Covid, not having spoken to anyone outside my household, or seen another face, for days, I really appreciated the fact that such events are accessible when you’re physically unable to leave the house.

 

Emma and I have talked about how much we’d like to do some online author events together – her WW2 novels and my 1930-set Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau being natural bedfellows – and the success of the launch of The Girl from Norway has fired me up to make this happen soon! 

 

Thanks to Emma for agreeing to let me write about her event for this blog, and good luck to The Girl from Norway! 

 

Book Two, the long view - Rowena House

Book Two isn’t so much gestating as morphing, like some alien creature of an unknown species, uncontainable in time or space except for its broadest “on brand” parameters: World War II and France.

If it does turn out to be the love story that so far I’ve imagined, then I know the lovers’ names. I thought I knew what she wanted and needed, too, but lately his story has come into sharper focus than hers, so I’m going to start over again, experimenting with a dual point-of-view and third person (past tense), breaking out of my comfort zone of first person present.

When I have the time, that is.

 

Which is now far, far scarcer than it was. Which means I won’t need to plan another launch party any time soon. Which is sad, but there you go: needs must and advances everywhere are low.

I am researching facts. Facts are good. Knowledge is addictive, as I remembered when looking back at past ABBA blogs, and finding one about a New Scientist article that described how the brain’s reward centres light up when we discover something new.

My bedside table is piled high with WW2 non-fiction and fiction, each book teeming with light bulb moments. That’s not procrastinating, right? It’s just being thorough.

Recently I finished Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, a beautifully written, inter-linked series of stories set in the earliest years of the war and the German Occupation of northern and western France. I’d taken it with me to Paris in late August to read slowly and deliciously in Marais cafes, the Palais Royal and the gardens of the Tuileries.

The stories remain unfinished as Ms Nemirovsky was deported to Auschwitz, where she died in 1942. I wonder if she would have published her first two suites in their original form, depicting some Germans so tenderly, had she survived.

As a researcher, and human being, I’d like to find an answer to that question.

 

As a writer, however, it is enough to have glimpsed her world, devoid of hindsight, to read about the raw fear of her characters, and the psychology of those with an inclination towards collaboration, and the pettiness of a time when all were ignorant of the horrors to come.

Such an avoidance of hindsight is, for me, one of the greatest challenges of writing historical fiction. As creators of credible characters, I believe we have to believe in our characters’ expectations of the future, even if they’re almost certainly wrong. Granting them clairvoyance seems to me to be fundamentally dishonest; we serve today's readers far better by rejecting self-serving mythologies and lazy nostalgia.

 

For my debut novel, The Goose Road, isolating a peasant girl from any false knowledge of the significance of her times was relatively easy: 1916 was a pivotal year in the First World War, and therefore containable, especially after my editor asked me not to dwell on subsequent, and consequent events – the Spanish influenza pandemics of 1918 and 1919. 

 

World War II feels different somehow, perhaps because it is closer in time and there are still survivors. The facts remain contested, too, as well as the simple duality of Us Good, Them Bad. Research has opened my eyes to the full contribution of the Red Army, which was blurred in my youth by the Cold War and lack of access to Soviet archives.

 

In Paris last month, I  stumbled across etched marble memorial panels to the dead Jewish children of the Marais, public expressions of remorse and responsibility for the deportation of Jews by the French authorities which weren't there in the late 1980s when I lived in that district.

 

Seeing these memorials made me rethink the reasons why I had decided to set Book Two in the Marais. Familiarity didn't seem enough any more, since any character living there would surely have known what was going on, and would therefore have to bear some responsibility, as witnesses if nothing else. But I've no intention of writing about the Holocaust; the death camps aren’t places I’m willing to enter as a fiction writer.

That led me deeper into questions about whose story I do want to write - and why - which inevitably raised issues of cultural appropriation. My protagonist in The Goose Road is also French, a 14 year old peasant. It didn’t worry me when writing her story that I am none of these things. Why, then, should telling the love story of Manon Lecoeur be different?

I discussed this briefly with a charming bookseller in the Hotel de Sully’s bookshop, which specialises in the history of Paris. He said I was welcome to write about a Parisian girl in 1944. His city belonged to the world to reimagine, he said. I thanked him most sincerely, and accepted that as permission to go ahead.

Which only left the small matters of a plot,  POVs, settings, tone, voice etc. etc.

Presumably they will come, given enough time and effort, enough patience and determination, plus the money for more research, and the gift of good sense to recognise moments of clarity,  and the willpower to keep going and going and going...

 

Gosh, wouldn't a bit of clairvoyance be nice to know if any of it will be worthwhile in the end?

Website: rowenahouse.com

Twitter: @houserowena

Instagram: @rowena.houseauthor or @rowenahouse

Research in the Tea Shop! by Miriam Halahmy

I love doing research and in the past couple of years my focus has become the Second World War. I was inspired to write my latest novel, The Emergency Zoo, about the culling of the pets at the outbreak of war, from a newspaper article I came across in early 2014. The book came out in May 2016 and is getting a lot of good reviews, including one that  said it filled a gap in 'children's war literature.'  So now I'm writing a second book set in the Blitz, a story that has emerged from the research begun during the writing of The Emergency Zoo.

Most of my research consists of ploughing through handwritten copies of the Mass Observation Diaries in the British Library. Fascinating though this is and the source of wonderful snippets of information, such as war rumours....there's gas what kills you and leaves you standing upright in the street...not everyone has easy to read handwriting. I also consult books and watch endless newsreels to soak up atmosphere, language, clothing, etc.

The Blitz Cafe, Hebden Bridge.

But in addition I love being able to view artefacts. Imagine my delight therefore when I discovered a tea room this summer totally devoted to the 1940s : The 19Fourteas Room in Havant,on the mainland above Hayling Island, near Portsmouth. The tea room is set in a beautiful 16th century cottage, with low beams and a wonderful open fireplace. There is an upper floor and out in the garden they are constructing an original Anderson shelter which has been donated.

The entire building is crammed full of original items from the 1940s many of which have been donated by people,who then come to have tea and view their items. It was absolute paradise for me. Just sitting their having tea and staring at hundreds and hundreds of beautiful and fascinating objects felt like I was doing the best research possible.

Of course I told the owner and the staff about The Emergency Zoo and my current book set in the Blitz. They were very interested and have said they might see if local schools would like me to come down and give a talk about my writing. I donated a copy of the Zoo and a poster and they were delighted.

Owner JacquiUnal with Kerry Lewis

With such a great place to experience total immersion in the war era, research couldn't be more fun!

www.miriamhalahmy.com

When war comes, who will save the animals? .... by Miriam Halahmy

I often read the news on my phone.  One morning at the beginning of 2014 I saw a feature which immediately grabbed my attention. It was a story from WW2, a story that I had never heard before and which quite frankly I could hardly believe.
As war broke out in September 1939, there was a great panic about the nation's pets and suddenly queues formed outside the vet clinics as people took up to 750,000 domestic animals - mainly cats and dogs - to be put down.
Remember the CJD crisis when cattle were piled up in a field and burnt? Echoes of the Holocaust? Well, that was the scene in some places.

People called it the Great Pets' Panic and some even referred to it as the September Holocaust. It seemed incredible that in our nation famous for being animal lovers, such a massacre could have happened. Without a doubt pet owners were spurred on by the fact that it was made clear in a government pamphlet that pets would not be allowed in public shelters. How would they be fed when rationing started and wouldn't the dogs go mad when bombs fell and run around biting everyone? This was the kind of reasoning which washed around the streets along with all the war rumours, such as the one that declared there's a kind of gas which kills you and leaves you standing upright in the street!

As I researched further it seemed to me that there was a story to be told here. I have a great passion for history and have a nose for untold stories. I just had to choose my audience. If I wrote a novel for adults, it would probably be quite gut grinding with some of the details I was unearthing. I didn't think this would work as a Y.A. novel - they'd all be too worried about falling in and out of love to focus on the animals. This had to be a children's story, I decided, eight years upwards and of course older readers enjoy a good children's story too.






My next question was, What would the children do if their parents told them that just before they are evacuated, their pets would be taken to the vet and put down because - as the government leaflet said - "It's the kindest thing to do?"
Put up the blackout, send the children away and put down your pets. That's how to get ready for the war!

I grew up in Hayes, Middlesex - here I am outside my old house and I used to play round that lamp post as a kid.
The Grand Union canal goes through Hayes.

There are factories on the other side and I used to ride my bike on this towpath. Back in 1939 when my story is set, the countryside would have been much closer to the town. So I decided to set my story in West London and send my characters over the canal, through some disused factories and into open fields. There would be a wood at the end with a derelict hut in a clearing.

It seemed to me that the children would decide not to give up their pets to be murdered and so they would try and spirit them away until they decided how to save them once war broke out. They decide to call their hideout The Emergency Zoo because someone brings a baby cobra from London Zoo.

I was very keen to have a wide a variety of animals as possible in the zoo. There were hundreds of thousands of animals kept in London before the war, including chickens, caged birds and monkeys. I was desperate to fit a monkey into the emergency zoo but I really didn't think the children would be able to manage. Apart from the cobra, I included a bad tempered goat, a parrot with a horrendous beak and a huge boxer dog.
But of course, most of the pets were the lovely, friendly fluffy kind that most children like to keep.

My book The Emergency Zoo comes out in May 2016. I will be visiting schools to give talks and I've decided that I want to take the zoo with me. So under my desk I have gathered a huge bag of toy animals, including a snake, a very endearing white rat and a rabbit which moves. Can't wait!

www.miriamhalahmy.com

Thinking aloud by Miriam Halahmy

Meg Rosoff observed that writing is 80% day dreaming and 20% writing and I quite agree with that. But I would also add into the mix my speciality - saying it out loud, preferably to someone listening. I really find that actually saying the thoughts tumbling through my mind helps both inspiration and organisation. Even if the audience is the poor old better half who is trying to have a quiet coffee up the road in our local Cafe Nero.

Of course if my audience is one of my experienced writer friends then that's really helpful. I have long suffering friends who meet me for nice literary coffees,long walks on the heath and even too many margaritas. Talking over a plot line or character development with experienced writers can of course help to keep me on the straight and narrow and avoid the pitfalls of the whimsical and outlandish.

But the better half, listening with only half an ear, allowing me to whitter on to my heart's content ( even as he yells, GOAL!) also works for me.



I also need to do my 'thinking aloud' when asked to give a talk. The thing about giving talks - well I find this anyhow- is that each one is slightly different, according to the audience, time factor and many other variables. I don't really have set talks, its more like themes which I can return to.

This month I have been invited onto a panel for the LSE Literary Festival, together with Philip Womack. We have to talk for 15 minutes on Re-writing the past vs Re-imagining the future.

This is a nice one for me because history is a great passion of mine and I've spent practically all my life imagining the past. But as my very first historical novel is due out in May and I am currently writing a second one, both set during WW2, then my thinking aloud currently focuses on how I have brought this era alive and made it relevant to 9-12 year olds.

The Emergency Zoo, (Alma Books, May 2016) asks the question, When war breaks out, who will save the animals? My characters are children aged between seven and fifteen, with the main cluster being four twelve year olds - 2 girls and 2 boys. Imagining their lives, clothes, setting, food, interests, worries and concerns was a mixture of research - my main character Tilly wades through streams and climbs trees all in a dress, usually tucked into her knickers - and quite simply thinking back to when I was twelve and how I viewed the world.

My imagination likes to soar when I am alone and fuelled up with coffee but it also likes time to bounce ideas off someone else and I think it is the very action of saying my words aloud which helps me to focus and develop my stories.

www,miriamhalahmy.com

A good excuse to read history books

I have always been passionate about History and read anything I can lay my hands on. When I was a kid I saved pocket money and birthday money for almost a year to buy the Larousse encyclopaedias above.
 My Dad encouraged my love of History and decided to make me a museum. He could actually make and fix anything, including putting an entire central heating system into our house in the '60s. Trouble is he was rather slow which drove Mum mad. Took him over a year and we just had to freeze while we waited.

Dad and I used to walk around with our eyes glued to ground, picking up anything of interest. Over the years I collected fossils ( and bought some) ancient pieces of wood, broken bits of pottery and even mined a tiny bit of amethyst from the Arctic Circle a few years ago. But my collection was so important to me when I was a kid that Dad decided to make me a proper museum case; a wooden box with a sloping glass roof which opens and allows you to view the collection stored inside. It was modelled exactly on the cases in the Natural History Museum which Dad took us three kids and Mum to most Sunday afternoons. I was allowed to paint it - to Dad's exact requirements of course.
 Sand down the wood lightly, apply undercoat and three top coats of white gloss. A lesson for life. My paintwork doesn't peel.

Dad's great mathematical and engineering knowledge stood him in good stead in the RAF helping to develop radar.

In my bedroom with my little bureau to write on and do my homework, my book case groaning with novels and history books, I could glance to one side ( it was a very small room) and peruse the contents of my 'museum' to my heart's desire. I took History to A Level and also made it my main subject for my teacher's degree.

Becoming a writer has given me the permission to seek out untold stories from History and to conduct primary and secondary research to my heart's desire.

 My first novel, for adults, Secret Territory, set in 1975 and in post war London, contains the untold story of a Jewish underground group, The Irgun, active in London at that time. My research was based on interviews with former members of the group and to date I haven't seen any further books on this subject.

My second novel, HIDDEN, for Young Adults contains original research about some of the little ships which went to Dunkirk in May 1940 to rescue the BEF. I had great fun going over one of these little ships, Count Dracula, which is moored on Hayling Island and no longer makes the annual pilgrimage back to the beaches of Dunkirk.






My forthcoming novel, THE EMERGENCY ZOO ,  tells a largely unknown story about the culling of hundreds of thousands of domestic pets at the outbreak of WW2. This book lead me into so much research, including reading the Mass Observation Diaries in the British Library and interviewing a dear friend who was a child at the time, that I have uncovered further untold stories. I continue to  research WW2  for the next books.

The Zoo is the first book I have written set completely in the past  and there are up to three more in the pipeline.. I rather like the idea of becoming a fully historical writer. But for me all writing is based on research and nothing can be written without knowing something of what might have come before. So History will always remain at the heart of my inspirations, my imagination and my fiction.

www.miriamhalahmy.com

Researching Victory by Megan Rix

While I was researching the lack of military trained British dogs at the start of World War 2; and the setting up of the War Dog School, for my latest book 'The Victory Dogs', I came upon the interesting fact that 200 fully trained French and Belgian messenger dogs had been sent over from Dunkirk and had apparently arrived safely in Dover and were never heard about again.

'When the British and French forces were pushed back to the Channel, by the Germans in their drive to the coast, Mark was one of the two hundred Belgian and French dogs, that were evacuated and taken safely back to England at Dunkirk (May 1940). http://community-2.webtv.net/Hahn-50thAP-K9/K9History15/

I'd already been commissioned by Puffin to write my third book about dogs set during World War 2 and immediately wanted to write about one of these dogs but that's when my research hit a blank wall. 

I got in touch with the usual sources: Imperial War Museum, Ministry of Defence Dog Training Centre as well as looking through the newspapers, both national and regional, of the time. There was lots of information about Dover being over-run with stray dogs brought back by soldiers from Dunkirk - but nothing about these fully trained dogs. My search widened. 

One very useful source of help was the animal activist and academic Dr Hilda Kean who had also been wondering what had happened to these dogs. I knew there were strict rules that dogs that weren't registered were put down because of the fear of rabies. It's the starting point for my first book in the series 'The Great Escape' and as I continued researching I was dreading finding out that these dogs had been put down. But Hilda assured me that the animal activists of the time would never have let that pass without reporting it. I thought maybe the boat/ship they were on had been sunk but apparently not. It was really a mystery and one that I intend to keep on looking into but have had to put to one side for the moment. If anyone knows I would love to know...

History I'm finally finding out, when I'm almost historical myself, has lots of interesting facts and once you dig a little you're soon digging a lot - and it's exciting! So much more so than I ever knew. At school I can only really remember writing down facts the teacher read out about The Tudors and we learnt about Kings and Queens when I'd much have preferred to learn about what 'real' people did and how they lived - people like me.

Photo by Bedford Times & Citizen

I love watching the pathe news-clips from the 1940's of the people of Dover being interviewed. Yes, Mr Hitler had been doing quite a lot of damage to their town but they couldn't stand around talking about it all day as their  dinner was waiting for them in the oven! Those are the sorts of quietly brave, and funny, people I like to read about.

My research led me to finding out more about the jobs women did in WW2. I knew there were land-girls and women worked in 'munitions' factories but I hadn't known they were also fire crew and search and rescue team members and countless other jobs. I somehow imagined the people were much more polite and refined (which they probably were) and thought the women would be wearing skirts to do their jobs until I started finding more and more pictures of women in overalls and thought of course they would be wearing them - much more practical and if you weren't issued with some you'd borrow someone else's.

I was delighted to find that I'm a size 2 in WW2 overalls and I was able to buy a pair of originals on e-bay for my school talks, because obviously no adult would imagine they were a size 2, unless they read the small print on the overalls label while they were doing their research (the size system seemed to have gone by height rather than girth.)

As well as overalls there's a plethora of helmets to be found, my one in the picture's restored and sandblasted but I was very interested, although I should have expected it, to find you could buy your own hat-like Zuckerman helmet with it's higher top for 5 shillings and 6d at the time.


I also now know far more about the ventilation systems of tube trains, how people sheltered on the platforms during The Blitz, and what's behind Wood Green station, as well as being an expert on pigbins and how to make lemonade from carrots.

Researching is like being a detective - there's so much interesting stuff out there. I love it.

What research have you been doing recently?





Reviews of 'The Victory Dogs' published by Puffin April 2013:

‘A moving tale told with warmth, kindliness and lashings of good sense that lovers of Dick King-Smith will especially appreciate.’ The Times

‘If you love Michael Morpurgo, you will enjoy this.’ Sunday Express

'The Great Escape' is currently shortlisted for the East Sussex and Young Quills book awards.

Megan supports Make it Possible http://fb.me/202gHxhq4 

Researching The Great Escape by Megan Rix

I'm a huge animal fan and love writing about them, so when Puffin commissioned me to write a book set in World War II about three animal heroes, I was delighted. The Great Escape started off as just the working title but ended up being the final one.

The animal characters in the book are two dogs and a cat, plus some heroic homing pigeons, and it was really important to me that I got these animal characters right. Fortunately, I've got a friend who has six rescue collies (one of them was just left tied to her garden gate late at night and she found him there in the morning). They became the inspiration for Rose in the book. My neighbour’s cat, who I fed while they were on holiday, helped with my research for Tiger. I usually meet two feisty Jack Russells when I'm walking my own dogs down by the river (my two are huge compared to them but the little dogs usually tell my two off!) One of them getting stuck down a fox-hole and needing to be rescued by the local fire-brigade helped me bring the impish Buster to life. 

This is the only story I've written that I needed to do some historical research for, and I loved visiting the museums and chatting to the people at Twinwoods Airfield, home of the annual Glenn Miller Festival, where I found out about Mosquitoes and Spitfires and Blenheim planes. I never realized how cold it was inside a World War II plane, or how cramped, or how vital homing pigeons were, until then.

My favourite part of the research was when I got to take my own dogs Traffy and Bella on a steam train like the pets in the book do. Traffy and Bella liked looking out of the window very much but they liked it even more when the train stopped and they got to play on the beach.

I used to help out at a charity that trained dogs to aid disabled people so I wasn’t surprised by the amazing things dogs and cats did in the war, but I was horrified when I learnt about all the pets that were put down at the start of World War II, and desperately wanted to save some of them – even if I could only do so in a story.

 In the end, though, the animal characters in the book saved themselves – or that's how it felt. And just like the many animals and birds awarded the Dickin Medal for bravery during World War II, they also played a vital part in saving human lives.

The Great Escape is published on 3rd May and I'll be signing copies at Bedford Waterstones, with at least one of my dogs, on the 12th May from 10-2pm. Please come along and say hello if you can - we'd love to see you.

Megan's website is: www.meganrix.info

PS I've been asked to recommend my favourite books about animals set during wars - what would you recommend?

Ruth Symes' website is www.ruthsymes.com Megan Rix's website is www.meganrix.com