Unheard Voices and WWII: Olivia Spooner and KJ Holdom

Bestselling authors Olivia Spooner (The American Boys, The Songbirds of Florence, The Girl From London) and Karen Holdom (The End and the Beginning) discuss what they uncovered doing research, highlighting previously unheard voices, and building characters, in the context of their recent historical novels.

Kete's very excited to feature their conversation!

Karen: I was fascinated to read the American writer Leon Uris's delightful account of being a soldier in Wellington during WWII. Had you read that before you started researching/writing The American Boys?

Olivia: I read Battle Cry by Leon Uris while I was still in the researching and mulling over characters and ideas phase for The American Boys. It was the most fascinating book and so helpful. While it is technically a novel it is extremely autobiographical. Leon Uris was a US Marine who spent time in Wellington, New Zealand during WW2 before heading off to fight at Guadalcanal. Battle Cry is based on his experiences and what I love most is that he wrote it in the 1950s so it was ‘current’ - I find these types of resources are the most valuable. His stories of life as a Marine in Wellington were a tad more ‘colourful’ than those I depicted in The American Boys! The boys did a whole lot more swearing, womanising, and drinking. The battle scenes against the Japanese that Leon Uris describes were truly horrific and had a lasting effect on the Marines involved. I knew after reading Battle Cry that I wanted one of my main characters to be similarly affected (no spoilers!). Mostly I drew so much inspiration from how the young men (who had signed up to be Marines without any real understanding of what they were getting themselves into) were feeling - their fears, their hopes, their loves, and to be able to read a book by a male, about a group of young men who reveal their internal monologues, helped me develop my own male character voices.

Which I think leads me on rather nicely to a question I wanted to ask you… In your novel, the main character is a fourteen year old German boy, Max. You portray him so well. I always find it fascinating (and brave) when adults write from a child’s point of view. How did you feel about writing from his perspective and how did you go about it? 

Karen: It sounds like we use similar strategies to help build characters. Reading contemporary witness accounts is so vital to researching and writing historical fiction. My biggest concern about Max's age (and his indoctrination) was that it was limiting in terms of what he could know and understand. I wanted to show those limits and how they impacted this generation of children, but also paint a much wider picture, which is why I introduced that second point of view: his mother, Marguerite, who offers an adult, female, and French perspective. In terms of writing a child's perspective, Max’s age was one of many challenges that felt equally daunting at the start — different gender, culture, religion, and an apocalyptic period in European history! I had to build a whole world to walk him around in, then test his actions and reactions. In order to build that world I had to research really deeply through reading, exploring the archives and interviews with the family of the boy whose true story inspired the book. The eldest of my three sons was about twelve when I started writing this, so I was pretty confident I knew how boys operated — I just needed to know Max's world. That took years! Also, it took a while to learn that I had to let the 'real' boy's story go to allow Max's story to take flight.

On the question of research: You've now published three historical novels and just finished a new manuscript! That must be a fantastic feeling. Does the world-building and character development get any easier? Please tell me yes! You must have done a heap of research to bring this fascinating period of New Zealand history to life so vividly, but where do you start and stop with research and how has your research strategy changed over time?

Olivia: Honestly, I don’t think the world-building and character development gets any easier, but luckily it is one of my favourite parts in the process of writing a book. I love the way, as I research and brainstorm, my imagination takes flight. I spend countless hours walking around with my characters in a place and time so different to my own - getting to know them in this world, and putting them in various situations to see how they respond - it is so much fun! It’s the getting that world down on paper that’s hard. The realisation that what I have created so beautifully in my mind is getting slowly butchered as I transfer it to the page! 

When it comes to research, I constantly ask myself - have I done enough? Should I be doing more? With all the information now available, and all the various rabbit holes I could go down, it can be a battle to make myself stop.

With my first historical novel The Girl from London, I wasn’t on a publishing deadline and I researched on and off for ten years! I learnt so much which was great, but a lot of my research ended up being irrelevant to the story. Since then, I’ve developed a more streamlined approach.

I find the best strategy that works for me, is to spend 4-6 months researching, where my sole purpose is just to absorb, to learn enough about the time and the events that I feel myself becoming a ‘part’ of it. When I can clearly imagine the world and I start to see characters appearing within it, I know I’m ready for the next step. Interestingly, during this part of the process I barely take any notes at all.

Then, I let my creative side take over and I write a first draft full of holes (trust me it is hideous and I would never dream of showing it to anyone). It’s generous to even call it a draft, let’s say it is more of a framework - scaffolding I can start to build my story on. It is this framework which acts as a filter showing me exactly what I need to research, and I am strict about sticking to it! Then I do the ‘proper’ research and take copious notes and start to tear my hair out trying to wrestle a complete draft. I continue to research all the way up to the final draft (double and triple checking all the little details along the way).

My biggest challenge is the conflict I feel over where the boundary lies between fact and fiction. With your book, I’m not sure if I should have been, but I was constantly flipping back and forth between the story and your reader notes at the back because I was so curious about this very thing - what was fact and what was fiction. I’d love to hear more about your own research process and how you approached this challenge of truth versus creativity. I understand you have a background in journalism - do you think this was helpful?

Karen: I love that approach to research. The first wave feeds straight to your subconscious to spark off that tricky first draft, then you get down to the nitty gritty only where it's needed. Both creatively more fun and efficient than my scattergun approach. I might steal it!

The conflict between fact and fiction was a nightmare to start with. My background in journalism made it hard to let go of any element of the true story that was gripping or important, let alone invent things.

For instance I still mourn the loss of a scene in which Max and his mother are shot at in a potato field by an Allied pilot. This was a scene made more powerful by the fact it had really happened and was a war crime. But the scene was out of time and place in the story, so I had to get rid of it. In the end, I was able to show what it showed elsewhere in the novel. Plus I resurrected the potato field scene for my website under the title Ghosts of Murdered Darlings. 

The other side of the coin is that making stuff up is one of the worst things a journalist can do (despite what people say)! After all those years of writing based on facts and interviews, my imagination was starved of a blood supply. It took a long time to learn how to settle into the daydreaming mode where ideas come. Daily writing helped. Then when ideas started to flow, I'd have a little panic and think 'Wait, where did that come from? Is that original?' It takes a while to trust yourself.

In the end I decided that it was the historical framework of the story that had to be 'true' and accurate. That left me free to build characters and story around that framework. As long as the characters were true to the time, place, and their own natures, they could do what they wanted.

The American Boys has made me realise how little I knew about the role New Zealand women played in assisting the war effort — far wider than stepping into jobs vacated by men who'd gone to fight. For instance I had never heard of war-time munitions factories in New Zealand. Was this something you always intended to bring to light?

Olivia: Oh the agony of deleting a scene (or entire chapter) when it is something you want the world to know about but it doesn’t fit the story! Never gets easier, but at least you found a way to resurrect the scene somewhere - I am going to check out your ‘Ghosts of Murdered Darlings’ shortly!

I’m so glad you asked that question about the roles NZ women played during the Second World War as this is something I have focused on in all three of my historical novels. Not only do I find it fascinating, but many people (including myself) were not aware of what the women did during that time and, as you say, I wanted to bring their activities to light. There is so much written about men at war, but far less about the women who worked ‘behind the scenes’, though I’m pleased to say that in recent years more of their stories are being told. Women did extraordinary things during wartime! They may not have been fighting on the frontline but they faced dangers and took risks and suffered trauma and loss. They worked gruelling hours and made sacrifices, yet there was no recognition and no glory in the many jobs (paid and unpaid) that the women took on. They also had opportunities and adventures and excitement that they would never have experienced if it hadn’t been for the war.

With The American Boys, I wanted to show how everyday New Zealanders lived during wartime - the way they clung to the ordinary - a simple meal at the table, listening to the radio, playing sport - while also adjusting to significant changes, not least of which, how they reacted when thousands of boisterous US Marines arrived in town! The social upheaval and change to the fabric of conservative New Zealand society was huge and has had a lasting impact. I think this was felt most strongly amongst the women - the mothers who welcomed young American boys into their homes as their own sons fought and died overseas, the young girls who became swept up in romances only to say goodbye to their American sweetheart and read his name on a list of casualties a few weeks later, the war-brides who married US soldiers and went to live in America, never to return to their homeland.

There were still many prejudices against women in the 1940s, but mostly the women weren’t aware of them - I had to be careful to write ‘of that period’ and this was sometimes very hard when I wanted my female characters to stamp their feet and protest loudly instead of meekly accepting their place. At the same time, I wanted to show that women had gumption and were tough and brave. Mostly I wanted to show that love and loss is universal regardless of the era - I hope my readers feel a strong sense of connection and understanding because for me, this is the great thing about historical fiction as opposed to a factual history book. When a reader connects to a character emotionally, when they can 'walk around in the character’s shoes’, the events of that remarkable period in our history have greater impact. 

Which leads me to my next question for you: Can you discuss how you came to write The End and the Beginning - what was the spark that lit the flame? And why did you decide to write a novel, rather than a biography? (I’m especially curious now, having read your answer above about the challenge of going from being a journalist who writes fact, to writing fiction)

Karen: I love that you have set out to tell those untold stories. For too long war stories were tied up in heroes, villains, and epic battles, which are timeless stories but do tend to be male and don't have the same complexities as those of 'ordinary people' who get caught up in conflict.

And that's what drew me to this story. In short, I stumbled across a brief account of a German boy, Edmund Baton, who'd run away from an evacuation camp in the final stages of WWII, had crossed his war-torn homeland to try to get home to the French border and ended up in even graver danger far from home.

I have three sons and the eldest was just a year or so younger than Edmund at that time. I couldn’t stop thinking about my boy out there at this apocalyptic time with the sky full of bombers, the Nazi death marches underway, German cities flattened, the western and eastern fronts fast approaching, terrible food shortages, and the Nazis turning the terror against anyone who dared consider surrendering. How would my son have survived such a journey?

I had been wanting to make the switch from non-fiction to fiction and knew as soon as I found this story that this was it. It had to be a novel mostly because I wanted to write one! But I knew enough to know that a biography or non fiction account would be extremely difficult given that there would be few living witnesses to events that happened seventy years earlier. 

Except I couldn't help doing a little digging, just in case, right? And within a few days I had an email from a Frenchman, Joseph, then in his mid-eighties, who was Edmund's first cousin and close childhood friend. He put me in touch with Edmund's sister Elisabeth, who was still alive and living in Germany. I was back in Europe within weeks sitting down to what would be many interviews with these beautiful humans. 

The richness of their family history transformed this book because it opened my eyes to the experience of the border families who were, in Edmund's case, literally half-French and half-German and their countries were at war! That's why Marguerite's story is so important to the novel because she is a French woman married to a German man living in a fascist regime which is turning her son into a Nazi and putting her relatives into work camps.

All that said, I never wavered from the decision to write it as a novel. 

I want to ask you the same question about what sparked off the idea for The American Boys and once you got to work, what was the biggest surprise uncovered in your research?

Olivia: I love how writing a novel involves serendipitous, pinch-me moments. It’s as if the universe is guiding you to tell a particular story. In your case, I keep imagine you receiving that email from Edmund’s relative, which led to so many fascinating interviews with him and others. Marguerite was my favourite character and her story was, in my mind, the beating heart of the book - I wonder if you might never have found her voice if you hadn’t received that email and spoken to the families living on the French/German border. I also know from reading the author notes that the only reason you were able to conduct these interviews was because you could speak French - another sign that this was the book you were meant to write maybe?

While I was writing The Girl from London, my mum gave me a box filled with letters and photographs from my grandfather. His mother had kept everything he’d sent home during his four years serving overseas for the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces during the Second World War. The letters were fascinating, and were absolutely my inspiration for writing The American Boys. He wrote about how he and the other boys were worried about the Japanese invading New Zealand and how they were hoping to return home to defend their country. He then wrote of his disappointment (that’s me being polite - he was absolutely livid) when he discovered they wouldn’t be going home but that Americans were being sent there instead. He was 23 years old by this point and had already been overseas fighting for two and half years - like the other troops, he was exhausted and desperate to go home.

Then, when I was researching for The Songbirds of Florence I came across more and more references to the Americans coming to New Zealand and the effect this had not just on the NZ soldiers overseas, but on the people back home. It was as if the universe was telling me again and again that this was the story I needed to tell.

In terms of the biggest surprise I uncovered during my research for The American Boys, this one I’m about to tell you about is pretty unbelievable! When the US Marines were boarding their ships, for security reasons they weren’t told where they were going and all the packing crates and supplies and paperwork were stamped with a code word for New Zealand. I actually came across this code word in Leon Uris’s book and when I read the code word for New Zealand, it sent chills down my spine. I thought Leon Uris had made it up, but I had to find out, so I did a lot of digging and eventually found a list of US Naval code words used during World War Two. What Leon Uris had written was in fact correct and the code word for New Zealand was 'Spooner'. If ever I needed a sign from the universe that this was the book I should be writing, that was it!

Karen: The Spooner connection gave me chills! Serendipity is indeed a gift for a writer! I am so glad you wrote this book because it has been a complete eye-opener for me in terms of the scale - the conflicts and complexities that arose out of having such large numbers of American soldiers in New Zealand at a time when so many Kiwi soldiers were in peril abroad and not allowed to return home to defend their country. I’m very much looking forward to your next one!

Olivia: I’ve been reflecting on your novel quite a bit, in particular the indoctrination of young boys and girls into the Hitler Youth Movement and their absolute belief in Hitler's ideals. It really hit home that though Max and Anna’s parents could see what was happening, their children were, for a time at least, blind to what was happening and wouldn’t listen to their parent’s warnings. I imagine you did a lot of research about this topic and I'm interested to hear if you came across many accounts of children and parents suffering from guilt after the war, blaming themselves and/or each other?

Karen: I mainly focused on the period I was writing about and the astonishing depth and breadth of Hitler’s plan to create an army of children by turning schools into fascist and military training grounds. (If you want to get a taste of how that is still happening in the 21st Century, check out the Bafta-winning documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin where an ordinary Russian teacher stands up against the State’s demand that he introduce militarism, flag-waving and propaganda into his classroom.)

Hitler doubled down on the school programme by bringing in the Hitler Youth movement (Jungvolk for younger children) which operated like highly militaristic Boy Scouts and Girl Guides clubs so he could children further in fascist propaganda in their free time as well.

I did learn that there was a devastating aftermath for children who got to the end of the war to discover that so much of what they were told was a lie. But the indoctrination ran deep in that generation despite the huge efforts Germany went to acknowledge its past and rebuild its education system. The most chilling story I heard was an anecdote from a German woman, the child of two parents of the ‘Hitler Youth’ generation. When her brother refused to attend compulsory military training in the 1960s, her mother held a finger right up to his face, and hissed: ‘coward, coward, coward.’ She had been raised to see fighting (and dying) for your country as the greatest gift a person could give.

Olivia: What a chilling story – and in the 1960s too! That will stay with me for a long time, as will The End and the Beginning. Thanks for the chat, Karen, I look forward to whatever it is you write next ☺

The American Boys and The End and the Beginning are in bookstores now.