Interview with Lauren Willig, NYT Bestselling Author of BAND OF SISTERS

A truly eye-opening interview with this smart, generous author! Lauren is a joy to talk to, and a writer whose work should be on everyone's historical novel reading list. You can purchase Band of Sisters here, or anywhere you prefer to shop for books.

The other book I mentioned, The Trouble with Women, is by Jacky Fleming.

Transcript

Susanne 0:27

I'm so excited. I'm here with Lauren Willig, who is the author of the fabulous Oh many fabulous books, the pink Carnation series and, and, um, Oh God, of course, uh, the summer country and she's a New York times bestseller and, uh, her most recent book will be out March 2nd.

Lauren 0:48

Women's history month.

Susanne 0:50

No, I know it's awesome because it's called band of sisters and it happens to be on a subject that is very near and dear to my heart. It's the Smith college relief unit in world war one who went over and worked. So to bring relief to these decimated villages that had been totally destroyed by the Germans as they went through. Anyway. I am so excited and I read the book and it is fabulous and you'll all love it. So, and I think it's already gotten some great stuff. Right? Is it like a indie next or

Lauren 1:23

it is, it's an indeed X-Pack, which makes me so happy.

Susanne 1:27

Oh, great. Really great. So anyway, I ha I'm been dying to ask you, how did you come upon these women? What happened to make you decide to write this book?

Lauren 1:39

Well, I stumbled on them. Absolutely accidentally, which is always the way the best things happen. I had had no idea the Smith college relief unit existed, but I was researching another book in addition to my own books. I co-write with my good friends, Beatrice Williams and Karen White. And we were writing a book set in world war one, world war II and 1960s France. And for the world war one period, we needed to know what it would've been like. In occupied, France, um, celebrating Christmas under the German occupation. So I was desperately searching for Christmas, customs and picker D during world war one. And up popped a memoir by Smith alumna talking about during Christmas parties for villagers. I'm right behind the front lines. And I thought, wait, this has to be a novel. This has to be something someone made up. What on earth are a group of Smithies doing, they're dressed up as father Christmas. It made no sense, but so of course I was procrastinating. So I read the whole memoir and it turned out it was not fiction. This actually happened. There was a group of smoke alumni. Who went overseas to bring humanitarian aid to French villagers right behind the front lines. And that memoir whetted my appetite for more because the memoir itself as is the way of memoirs, it was written after the fact it was couched in somewhat. Periodically obscure terms, you, as she glossed over things that I guess she didn't want to talk about in all of that. And some things were mushed together, you know, as one does, but the outline of the story was there that you had this charismatic alumna who keeps the call for action and said, there's a humanitarian crisis in France. And the people needed to fix it are clearly Smith alumni, American college women, because if you want something done right. Yeah. Ask an all girls school girl. And within three months she had a troop selected outfitted. They designed their own uniforms and on a ship to France where they went to a little village called gray court. Um, depending on where the lines were at any given moment, about somewhere around 11, nine to 11 miles behind the front lines. And, um, their job was basically social service and relief work, rebuilding villages, um, classes for children, basic medical care. There were two doctors in the group and they were there from October until they land in France. In August of 1917, made it to their headquarters in September. And they were there until the end of March of 1918. When the Germans advanced again and everything got very dramatic, very quickly.

Susanne 4:22

Yes. And, uh, I should tell everyone that I am actually sitting, uh, about a half a mile away from what are known as the gray court Gates at Smith. And I was a Smith. I am a sniff alum. And so that's one of the reasons I was like, Oh, goodie, jumping up and down about this book. Um,

Lauren 4:42

Well, and the incredible thing is that the gray cart Gates at it at Smith or an exact replica of the Gates on the ruined, Shacho where the Smithies were headquartered. And I've been kind of shocked by how many Smithies I've spoken to, who had no idea that that was where the Gates. Came from, um,

Susanne 5:01

I had no idea until I read and I thought gray corn. Oh, the gate,

Lauren 5:07

because you knew these things that are just such a part of the fabric of your life. You walk by them all the time. You'd never think about them or where they came from or why they're named what they're games. They're just part of your world.

Susanne 5:18

Yeah. Yeah. If times were different and I was walking around downtown, I would have taken a picture of them long before now, because you can see them. Smith is perched on a Hill, right at the end of main street. And the gray court Gates are right there. You know, it's what you see went from down in the village, in the town. So, um, what, one of the things I really loved about this, uh, because we've been sort of barraged with world war books, world war II, world war one. I loved that this was about the relief work about the stuff that isn't glamorous about the, um, Not the sort of spies doing dangerous stuff, although that's a lot of fun too. Um, but you, this work that could have been seen as very pedestrian and behind the scenes you brought to life. So well, so tell me a little bit about your strategies for how you did

Lauren 6:14

that. Well, you know, in this case, you know, usually when, when I work on my books, I'm pulling together all sorts of little bits of fragmented sources and triangulating around absence and really making choices about strategies with this book. I really feel like I was so spoiled because in the so Sophia Smith collection at Yale, there is a treasure trove. Of material, um, thousands and thousands of pages of letters that they real members of the Smith college relief unit wrote home from the front and these letters have been preserved and the lovely, amazing, helpful librarians of Smith college, special class collections digitized. Thousands of pages and sent them to me. So I was able to read their experiences in real time. And so unlike most of my books where I really am making, um, plot choices and crafting their world and creating the narrative arc here, I feel like the arc was handed to me when my, my biggest problem with Sage, he had so many incredible things that I couldn't cram them all in. Um, and like you said, when I say incredible things, I'm not talking about, you know, Going undercover in German headquarters, disguised as a cleaning lady. Um, I'm talking about things like getting. Getting chickens for French villagers. So there'll be eggs for the children. Um, he, that was actually one of their big problems with this had been an agricultural area. It had been one of the bread baskets of France and the Germans when they pulled out, the Germans had occupied the area for three years. I mean, we always talk about occupied France during world war II, but. They occupied in world war one. And boy, did they do a job on the area? They poisoned the Wells, they broke the plows. They dynamited any structures. They could dynamite. Basically they gave very, they did everything, but so the fields was salt and they probably would have done that too, if they had enough time. And so one of the big jobs. The Smith college women faced was rebuilding the agricultural base. That was the backbone for this region. And many of these where they were well educated, urban, upper middle class women who had never met a calc before.

Susanne 8:24

Oh yeah. There are some really, really funny moments in the book. I have to say moments when I definitely laughed out loud, um, for that reason. But what was also interesting to me is that even though. It was it highlighted in some ways, a lot of the differences of Smith as a community, as a place, because there was a real class consciousness there too, you know, there was like, there were like the women who were. The upper-class women who went to Smith to find, you know, because they were going to go to college. Cause they were going to meet somebody and get married to a really nice prospect and then other people who came on, scholarship, whatever. Um, and you did a really good job of that. What made you decide to have those two women friends? Was that something that was given to you or is that something you created?

Lauren 9:15

That was, it was a combination. So when I was reading that initial memoir by Ruth Gaines, um, uh, ladies of gray court, one of the things that jumped out at me was the subtle difference in tone used when referring to the one Catholic member of the unit, there was a very much a sort of us against them, you know, as those people do. And of course that the peasants. Oh, they sometimes have their letters. They refer them as peasants, the villagers with whom they were dealing were Catholic. And so there was a very, you could sense that air of condescension and the one Catholic member of the Smith college relief unit was treated as a of, Oh, she can talk to these people because she knows what it's like. And that really struck me. And so one of the things I did. Go in and research. When I was working on this book was the history of Smith college, because I wanted to know what their, what these women's pre history would've been like, what was your experience at Smith? What were the worlds they came from? You know, who were they before they joined the Smith unit? And I found among other things, um, a rather archaic histories of Smith college and in the, we were breakdowns with the demographics. Um, for, I think the year I had was 1911. And I was fascinated because in any given year, um, there would be maybe there would be roughly three Catholic students and one Jewish student per class. And which to give you as contrast to we're 50 Baptist students, which is not true of a category, I would've thought you would've seen, but you have every variety of Protestant. And then these tiny, tiny numbers of Catholic and Jewish students. And I thought, well, what must that experience have been like for them? And then sort of leaving that and moving on to sort of broader class distinctions. What really struck me rise researching life at Smith was that it was not the seven sisters as we think of them from. Mad men or the 1950s that this was actually still a very different seven sisters. This in many ways, the Smith that these women attended in the earlier part of the 20th century had more in common with the Smith of the founders of that founding generation of Smith, where they were still trying to prove very hard that women could be just as educated as men. This was not a finishing school. And in fact, if you read there a couple of novels I read written by Smithies about their life at Smith, around the turn of the century. And one theme that comes out is persuading people that it is not in fact, unlady life like or death to your marital prospects to go to Smith, um, that this is not a place for wealthy eating bats. At this point, you know, this is very much a, our Greek had better darn well be better than that of a boys, a Yale, and. So that's why, while I have, I have my scholarship student, my two heroines are. A scholarship student, um, from an Irish Catholic Brooklyn family, very much a tree grows in Brooklyn and a, um, the daughter of an eccentric socialite suffragette from an old Knickerbocker Mayflower family. And the reason I had to make her mother and eccentric socialite suffragette was because, you know, someone of that Atul on would not otherwise at that time period have gone to Smith. She would have done that. Debbie, it was actually in some ways, very controversial for my heroine, Emmy and her cousin, Julia. Who's also in the book, who's a doctor to choose to go the educational route instead of just doing the debutante thing and marrying some nice union club member. And so I think the problem is we have this idea of the seven sisters that's tainted by the finishing school reputation. The schools acquired later on. It wasn't like that. I mean, it was. Rigorously academic.

Susanne 13:05

I have to tell you, uh, I have to tell you a family anecdote of mine. My mother also went to Smith and she was in the class of 51. And she, her father was an educator. He was headmaster of tower Hill school, uh, for like 10 years and stuff. And anyway, he was quite an extraordinary person. He was a Yalie. My mother got into Smith, Vassar and Wellesley all on the same day. And she really wanted to go to Wellesley. Her father said. You're going to Smith. That's where the smart girls go. So it still did, even in the fifties have that reputation as being a rigorous school. And I think it

Lauren 13:48

still does. It definitely does now, but I think the problem is for, for readers coming out without that personal experience, um, But so many of us, our views are filtered through watching mad men and those scenes where you see all of the seven sisters alum sitting around together saying, well, I went to Bryn Mawr and I studied the French Renaissance. And you know, now I'm baking cakes. And so, you know, there it's.

Susanne 14:13

Yeah, yeah. I mean it definitely those pressures, societal pressures existed then even for well-educated smart women,

Lauren 14:21

I was very much struck how, by how I do think we have this idea now as. Women's colleges were something that wealthy women did as a matter of course, when in the period in which I'm writing about, it's actually the opposite. You don't do this. As a matter of course, it was an act of will on the part of the women attending Smith to say, I'm going to do this. And of course there were, there were actually what, the things that popped up. Up in one of my research materials was their work, you know, a handful of Smithies who went because they wanted to be invited to Yale prom. But for the most part, these were incredibly hard-working driven women who were also very involved in the suffrage movement who were pioneering their way into fields that had not previously been open to women. And so that was really the norm rather than the exception.

Susanne 15:07

Yeah. And there was a group of women. I mean, I did some research around. The 1911 period for a manuscript I have, and there were women they would go to, um, The mills in Holyoke and do sort of charity work outreach. And they would, they would sort of, they definitely were a little bit like, um, social service people even locally, even within their community. So I think that sense of we need to help. We need to organize and do something was very strong, uh,

Lauren 15:36

all along. It seems like it's very, that is a Smith tradition that is just so bred into the backbone of Smith and has carried over over the years. So although I did not myself have the benefit of going to Smith, I went to, I know it's dry. I feel like such a poser having ran this book, but I went to a little old girl school in New York that was run by a Smithy. Um, she had come to Smith. It was her first job out of Smith in the 1950s. And by the time I got there in the eighties, she had been headmistress for about 30 years and had basically shaped the school in her image. But every year she would call us together and give us a speech about how she had been a scholarship girl at Smith. And it had changed her life and that we owed the world for the educational opportunities we had been given, and it was our obligation to go out and do good because we had been given so much. And so when I all these years later stumbled upon. This memoir and then went from there to the letters of the Smith college relief. Yet members, I could hear my head, Mr. voice in my head, and suddenly all of these things she told us made sense to me. And I realized it was part of that Smith tradition and that Smith lineage that she had brought with her and brought to the cheapen school in New York at that strong tradition of service, which I mean completely motivates these women who went off to France during world war one. Yeah.

Susanne 17:01

Yeah. Um, I also get a sense. Of the detail it's so rich, you really get a, get a feeling for how these women were thought of by the people who are there too. And, um, you know, was that something that, that you gleaned from the memoir or. Yeah, but that

Lauren 17:22

was something that was in the letter. So I left the memo. I don't want to just the memoir, it was a, I'm grateful to the memoir for getting me into it. Um, but as soon as I got from the memoir to their actual letters, I began to realize in how many places the memoir had left things out or mildly skewed things, or, you know, basically the memoir was, was useful as a jumping board. But, uh, beyond that, I was so delighted. You get to the real letters, because these were in many cases, unedited accounts of what was happening. Minute by minute, these were the things they were scribbling off on bits of stationary couch from Paris hotels that they were sending via friends who were randomly going home in the hopes that the sensors wouldn't be able to read them. So, you know, your readings are the, the unedited. Did daily accounts of their lives and it gets very raw and personal in places. I guess the bit of the stuff about how the people there perceive them with definitely something that came out of these letters. Um, there's a bit in the book where. Uh, my, my, the love interest of one of the women informs her, that the children have started playing a game, uh, called the ladies of great court where, you know, they, they run around their little circle and fall down and pretend to be heard. And then some. The ladies helped them up again and all that. And that came straight out of the record was, you know, for these children, the, the Smith culture leaf unit members, they, they made such a difference in their lives. In so many ways. These were children who hadn't had proper food for months. They'd been sleeping literally on planks in the mud and the Smithies came and they brought them beds and they brought them blankets and they were doing it. What you said before? All the unglamorous. Little stuff. They bought cows and they milked the cows and they made the rounds with these giant jugs of milk every day to make sure all the kids had milk. And they were dealing with thousands of villagers in villages spread out around. I mean, on the map, it looks small, but for them and their little trucks and the deep mud of the som these were big gifts, distances, they were traveling relatively to make sure these kids had their milk. And they joke that they hold so much furniture for these people who had nothing, that when the war was over, they be able to qualify as furniture movers. And so it was, you know, they really, they literally, they rebuild people's. Lives from the ground up.

Susanne 19:44

They did it without any experience of those things too. I mean, that's, what's really interesting to me. I mean like only one of them could drive, knew how to drive. So they kind of had to figure all that out and, you know, they just, they just had to sort of make it up as they went along. And um, with the exception of the medical care, of course, which had to be provided by people who were trained, but

Lauren 20:06

even there they had, yeah, they had two doctors who were attached. Um, one who is a fully accredited, um, Smith grad from, I want to say the class of 1896, he was a very, you know, uh, remarkable character in her own. Right. Um, the woman on whom I based my fictional one was Alice, well talent, who was a groundbreaking female doctor and said that basically she had never seen anything in the slums of Philadelphia, like what she saw in these French villages that the need was just so great. And. So staggering, but anyway, he said, yeah, they had to train doctors, but they had no nurses. And so a lot of these women took on nursing obligations with really no official training, but there, the idea of their eccentric and fascinating founder was that their Smith education should enable them to turn their hand to anything. They tried. And it didn't matter if they'd never assembled a truck before they were smart women, they should be able to figure out and ditto all of this other stuff. Although, you know, in some ways I feel a little disingenuous by seeing that none of them had any training because Y number of them did have, was a settlement house background. Right, right. Yeah, because this was the great age of settlement house work, you know, like the junior league. Yeah. Before the junior league also became sort of your stereotype is something wealthy socialites do for fun. It was, this was real nitty gritty work where educated upper middle women would go into underserved areas and bring, um, Hygiene class is basic literacy and social work, basic social work. Um, and so a lot of the members of the real Smith college relief unit had that settlement house background, and they had gone into settlement house work right after Smith. And so we're able to take that experience and translate it to these French villages, even though they were dealing not with an American urban slum, but with these roar devastated French villages.

Susanne 22:01

It's such a, such an evocative and a richly observed kind of world. I think you quote some of the letters in, in the book too. Are they the, the actual letters that you quote or did

Lauren 22:14

you very narrow line because I'm so, you know, back in the day, uh, uh, in addition to my other random degrees, I picked up, I have a law degree, and so I'm always very twitchy about reproducing things without permission, but. Some of the letters were published in the Smith alumni quarterly in 1917 and 1980. And so those are, um, technically. In the public domain and can be quoted. So each, because I watch it, I love these letters so much. I wanted people to have a phone flavor of what it was like reading the real Smith units letters, what these lines they were, they were snarky. They were hilarious. They were clever. They were heartfelt. They were, uh, the letters are I, there were times I watch and in the whole book and just do an annotated version of their letters. It was so wonderful. But so this was my compromise. Putting little snippets of letters. But what I do is I translate them to the voices of my own individual characters. So some of the letter headings are entirely my own invention. Others are very closely paraphrased versions of real letters, but they are in fact paraphrased. And where letters were in the public domain in the Smith alumni, quarterly. Sometimes when I particularly fell in love with a phrase, I would catch a whole phrase. For one of my letters and incorporate it into the otherwise fictional context. So they're, they're very much a past each, but I really hope that they capture the tone of the original and that they'll inspire readers to go click on this myth, alumni, quarterly archives, and read the excerpts of the real letters that were printed there in the alumni mag that are there online for free.

Susanne 23:54

It's, it's such a rich resource. Of course, the Smith library it's being completely rebuilt and it's supposed to be done this spring. And, uh, so getting anything, getting access to anything, any of their collection is really hard right now. And so it's, and, and we're so lucky to have. So much material digitized, so much material available on the web. Oh, I know. It's

Lauren 24:20

incredible. Know when I was, I was teaching at Harvard back of the day, am I say back of the day, the early thousands. And I remember warning my students off. Um, Googling things and using digital resources because of course the internet was in its infancy. And I would have students turning in papers where they would be citing. Um, the marijuana growers of America association on Magna Carta got Magna Carta that showed up in this marijuana. My website. I was like, guys, no, this is not how this works. And so I feel a little sheepish now because Google has become one of my primary tools, but thanks to the Haffey trust and Google books, now that there's so many out of print works, that I would not otherwise be able to access. Like for example, this memoir, um, he's a great court. That led me to the Smith unit. It was digitized by the happy trust and that's how I found it.

Susanne 25:12

And, and the other thing, um, you know, the other thing that we always warn people against is Wikipedia. However, there are many very scholarly entries on Wikipedia and you can go down and they often have really good footnotes with sources so that you can actually find the sources that you need to get to from the general information that was there. Of course you have to. Be discerning. You have to understand what's. What's good. And what isn't, but

Lauren 25:39

yeah, that's always, the problem is approaching it with a critical mind. You even sometimes with the actual sources, you you'd have to use that same critical framework.

Susanne 25:49

Yes. Because, uh, yeah. Prejudices and yeah. Received opinions sort of sneak in all over the place, you know? Uh, so yeah, I remember things I got to, I knew what I was, I was going to say, I know I better say it before. I forget the whole, the whole thing. People, I don't think people appreciate so much is that a memoir, um, from the past is not necessarily at all objective, often people wrote memoirs to kind of correct history to sort of leave an impression that they want to leave. So, um, for instance, when I was researching my forthcoming book about, um, Adelaide lobby gear, uh, her. Principal rival left a three volume men memoir that she must have dictated in the mid, mid 19th century. And it is so it's so patiently based on the research other research I did, there are so many gaps in so many things She never actually mentioned the name of this woman who was her main rival.

Lauren 26:57

Oh, which is very challenging,

Susanne 26:59

very tele, but anyway, that's just, you know, because we think, Oh, I have a primary source. I have this

Lauren 27:06

just reliable than anything else. And I figured that out and you know, you and I have discussed our love for Madam companion. Before, but when I was my senior year of cheapen, um, I somehow got the English department to let me write a historical novel as my individual study. And I wrote, I wanted to be Jean Platy when I grew up at that point. So I wrote a novel about, or tones to Barnei on whom I had a huge girl crush and I used her memoir. As my primary, of course, you know, I had a whole shelves of books about Napoleon and Napoleon court and employee and family and blah, blah, blah. But I was so excited. I had her memoir and video, his memoir. Of course she writes it years later. I mean, after everything and you know, from that, you would believe she was the most virtuous person to ever walk the earth. And it's just, when you're looking back now, I realized, you know, how incredibly. Doctorate. And that whole thing was, and it was years later, I remember that I realized just how much she had jumped over or changed or, you know, played with, but that's given me a healthy suspicion of memoirs ever since.

Susanne 28:14

Yeah, exactly. Is there anything you want people to know about the book that I have not even thought to ask you?

Lauren 28:21

Oh my goodness. No, I think you, I thought the one thing that really struck me that it's less about the book per se, and we're about the Smith college relief unit. Um, I was very much struck by the fact that in their time the Smith college relief unit was a media sensation. And I think that's something that comes through in the book. This was a very deliberate act on the part of their founder, Harry at Boyd hall. Us who set up a press campaign. The minute they were over there in France, she even came up with a catchy name for them, lay, lay, collision, and MILLIQAN, which of course was totally wrong. Cause collegians. In France college, high school. Yeah. But they very quickly changed that became laid down and they Dom amount of cat instead. But she had this idea that they were going to have this handy moniker and everyone would know about them and that this would advance the cause of women's education. And women's suffrage. At the same time, it was advancing the lives of these particular French villagers. It was really very canny and it actually kept them from being kicked out. When their sector changed into the hands of the bridge, he didn't like women in their war zone. They were like, you know, we have to protect you. We don't want you here. And they're like, really, you don't have to protect us. We're saying you don't get that. And in fact, you, but there was such a human cry when the Brits, Trump tried to evict them because they were so well-known and so popular, they showed up in all the American papers. And I just find it deeply fascinating that after all of that, you know, they were so famous that the red cross joked. That the Smith unit and joining the red cross would up the red cross as image. And you know, now no one's heard of them and it just it's. I think it's some of it is what you were saying about the nature of their work and what they were doing was not glamorous. We're doing social service work. They were doing teaching, they were doing agricultural work. It's all the sort of basic stuff to rebuild lives. And so, and at the time that was recognized, but now we like our history. We have an idea of what Wars are like. We like our history more glamorous. And so the Smith unit was forgotten. And I just, I think it's so important to bring stories like this back and balance the

Susanne 30:30

record hundred percent agree with you. Um, I think that, uh, I hope that people who will read this will, will definitely get that, that sense and understand it, a facet of the war that I, you know, I certainly didn't even think of, you know, and, you know, it's really interesting because. No. And I can't remember. I think it was in world war two that, uh, Anne Morgan and her cohort when world

Lauren 31:02

war one,

Susanne 31:03

I couldn't remember. But yeah, they did a similar kind of thing, and it

Lauren 31:07

wasn't just to add Morgan and here's the thing. Cause I fell in love with these Smithies and I would love to claim that they were entirely unique. One of a kind, but the truth is. They were among other people who were doing similar work and Morgan was over there, Helen Clay Frick was over there doing her. Right. Although the funny thing with Ann Morgan is so in their letters, um, a couple of members of the Smith unit go over and visit and Morgan at her headquarters at blaring core. And they come back being like. She has a non ruined Chateaux and her tea is served on China because they were roughing it herbal army barracks on the grounds of a ruined Chateau. I mean, living in really deplorable conditions. And there was Anne Morgan, several miles away living in luxury with her tea, bring brought to her on a silver solver and there was wallpaper on the walls. Just like you. It's so funny reading the letters because you get on the one hand, they're like, no, no. We're doing this the way we should be doing this, but there's this little note of wistfulness. They were, again, we're getting Helen Clay Frick who are funded by their own personal fortunes. Um, the Smith unit was funded by Smith, alumni and donations, and they were very conscious that they had to account for every single penny spent. And they had a new director come in about midway through their time bear, who was like, I don't know how to get these girls to spend any money on themselves. You give them money, they'll go buy things for the kids. Okay. Has your peer, they were, they were really, they had cetera. And that I think is what makes them different from some of these other projects. But back to your original point, there were, there was a lot of relief work going on. There were a lot of American women over there contributing to the war effort in their way, and we forgotten all of them because it just doesn't tie in with our narrative of world war one.

Susanne 32:55

Exactly and, you know, just so in case people don't know, Ann Morgan is JP Morgan's daughter. it is all so fascinating and I love digging up these slightly obscure bits of history, as you know, And, um, and we have that in common, I think. But anyway, um, I think we're not

Lauren 33:13

interested in Distaff history and I get very frustrated with the idea that women's history is somehow a separate discipline and what we're doing. Pulling up the outliers. When in fact what we're doing is we're taking something that was there and we storing it to the picture where it ought to have been.

Susanne 33:31

Yeah. It felt, I'll tell you what bothers me more than anything is when people call it her story. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. It's all history. It's just that, you know, the women were written out of it a little bit. Well, this is not like it's

Lauren 33:44

separate. Yeah. If there's something that's driving me, absolutely nuts right now because, um, I'm writing a sort of prequel to band of sisters. I got fascinated by the life of the founder of the Smith unit and I took a fictionalized version of her and, um, used so Harriet Boyd halls in her youth wound up. A gang wrapped up in both the Greco Turkish war of 1898, and then came back to America and nursed in the Spanish American war. And there's all this crazy stuff that happened. And I was fascinated. There are some weird inconsistencies, which, you know, our meat and drink two historical fiction writers because they're like, wait, Why doesn't she mention that what actually happened there? Why is there this blip in her life? I have been researching this fashion American war and the real founder of the Smithian Harriet Boyd clause went in Europe with Clara bargain and the red cross. And it has been driving me nuts because Clara bargain and the red cross did a amazing and important things during the Spanish American war. But if you read the official. Um, monographs about the Spanish American war. There are two big ones that came out relatively recently. One has one line about the red cross and the other has not a single reference. And I'm very lucky. I have a good librarian friend who is amazing at pulling up, um, forgotten bits of history for me. And she found me some of the stories of the real women of the red cross who were over there. And again, like the Smith unit. There were a couple who were media sensations. There was one woman known as the angel of the Seneca because she was on a troop ship called the Seneca where she single-handed flea. And she was not a trained nurse. She was a journalist who had not been able to get accredited, but she, Clara Barton was like, you write good stuff about the red cross. You can come with my group, you're going to have to do some nursing. We'll show you the ropes, but you know, she wasn't a trained nurse, but she saved an entire ship full of sick people that had been sent off insufficiently provisioned. And this was, she testified before the precedent about the mistakes that had been made during the war. Oh wait. It was a really, really big deal. I had never heard of her. She's not mentioned in any of these books, you know, but for these ancient articles, my librarian friend dug up for me. I would have no idea she existed and she's just one of many. And, but that thing about there being no lines or one line about the red cross in these official books on the topic drove me nuts. Whereas, you know, they'll tell you what Teddy Roosevelt ate for breakfast on it. And given day now don't get me wrong. I love Teddy Roosevelt. He's a fascinating character, but

Susanne 36:14

it seems funny. I have to share with you some, a project I'm doing nonfiction. I am, uh, um, pretty much almost done with my proposal for a book about women composers. I, you know, I I've had a music background. I was, I have a PhD in music history. And, um, in looking through all of the books available, this is for young young adults. Right? All of the books about composers. They're all men. They don't even mention that there were women. I think there's one book that mentions Clara Schumann. But other than that, it's maddening

Lauren 36:50

when they do mention, it's almost like they're doing you a special favor in this less talented, less interesting person because she's female. It's the same with female artists. Um, which I only know a little bit about, because in one of my books, in my pink Carnation series, I had a female artist. And so I was digging into Elizabeth BJ, LeBron and her compatriot.

Susanne 37:16

Well, she's the one who wrote the three volume memoir that doesn't mention Adelaide gr

Lauren 37:21

Oh, really? That was

Susanne 37:25

Yeah. Yeah. I have a very funny book called the trouble with women. It's an illicit little tiny illustrated book, and I can't remember the name of the author. I'll put it in the notes, but the bow on the back cover, it says, can women be geniuses or are their arms too short? And it's all about the crazy things that men used to say to why women couldn't be as good as they were and did, can do things, you know, we're just,

Lauren 37:53

we're prone to hysteria.

Susanne 37:55

Yeah. Oh, that too. Yes. Yes. And women painters had, we can, so they couldn't have the brush for very long Tara.

Lauren 38:04

That's just, I mean, we could just talk about this for hours. The minute women move into a profession that they have previously been told. They're inadequate to be part of suddenly that profession becomes less snazzy and exciting.

Susanne 38:16

Yes.

Lauren 38:17

Yeah. Yeah. I need to think there was a time when teaching was an elite profession, because of course it was educated men and therefore it must be important. But the minute the bulk of teachers became women. Suddenly teaching starts to be looked down on and treated as an extension of caregiving. Which, as we all know, takes no effort at all and could be done

Susanne 38:36

by no effort at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yes. Well, I've kept you on for an awfully long time, but I, you know, this is a long overdue conversation and I hope we have many more. And I hope when the world opens up again, that you'll come up to North Hampton and visit and we'll be able to actually, you know,

Lauren 38:56

Library and, and we can put this discussion over drinks or coffee or something like that.

Susanne 39:02

Absolutely, absolutely. But I really, really appreciate you coming on here. It's band of sisters, the women of Smith college go to war by New York times bestselling author of the summer country. Lauren Willig, who in addition to being a great author is a lovely human being. And, um, I, I will. I hope everybody goes out and buys it and makes it a huge success and, and learn something. Somebody said that that, uh, historical fiction is the gateway drug to history. So this is a really good gateway drug.

Lauren 39:37

I love being a gateway drug. Thank you. Think your program is a brilliant gateway drug for history.

Susanne 39:42

Thank you. Thank you. It's been, it's so much fun. I mean, I really do it for my own selfish reasons. Cause I get to, uh, get to talk to people like you. I will say goodbye and, um, we will talk again.

Lauren 39:57

Yes, we will talk in. Thank you so much for all of you all that. You've been doing all your support for the book. I so

Susanne 40:02

appreciate it so much. It's a pleasure.