338. Writing Unique Perspectives in Historical Fiction with Roseanna White

Author and historian Roseanna White discusses fresh perspectives in oversaturated genres, how to write them, and gives tips on how to blend reality with fiction.

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Visit Roseanna's website:
https://www.roseannamwhite.com/

Find copies of her books:
https://www.roseannamwhite.com/books

Check out Roseanna's socials:
https://www.tiktok.com/@RoseannaMWhite
https://www.facebook.com/RoseannaMWhite/?fref=ts https://www.instagram.com/RoseannaMWhite/#

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the author-focused podcast that takes a whole-person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. There are already countless books on the market depicting the uncertainty and upheaval of everyday life during World War II. But how can authors write a story that presents a unique perspective while keeping it historically accurate and emotionally engaging? Bestselling, Christie Award winning, historical fiction author Roseanna White is here to share how she did this in her newest book, The Collector of Burned Books.

Jennia: I am so delighted to have you here!

Roseanna White: It's so much fun to be here! Thanks for having me.

Jennia: So you've covered a vast amount of time periods and different settings in your work. So what first drew you to writing a story set during World War II?

Roseanna White: Well, when I wrote one of my previous books, Yesterday's Tides, it was a dual time that had a World War I line and a World War II line. And while I was researching for that—because I had never written, well, past the 1920s in my historical stuff before—I just started doing research and found all these cool things that was (Jennia laughs) like, "Oh, it would be so fun to write a story on that someday. So the more I researched, the more ideas come. And that's where this one came from, was some of the research I was doing.

Jennia: And when you were doing research then, is that when you found out about the library of banned books in Paris, or was that just another deep dive that came from that initial research?

Roseanna White: It was around the same time. I had been lent a book called When Books Went to War from a friend of mine that was all about the role of books in the publishing industry in World War II. I don't know why she thought this would be of interest to me (both laugh), right? So I read that and there was just this one paragraph mention about the Library of Burned Books. And that's like the only thing I remember from this entire book, right? Like, I read the whole thing and I'm, like, "What I really want to know about is this Library of Burned Books thing"—

Jennia: Yeah!

Roseanna White: —So in that book I learned that it was started by popular authors like H.G. Wells, who found themselves on the burned list and the banned list, simply because they had opposed Hitler. So you speak out against the regime, you get put on the list, even if you live in England, or America, or whatever. And so these authors banded together, specifically with some of the exiled writers from Germany who had to leave because they were Jewish or some other ethnicity that was being persecuted. They left in the 30s and kind of ended up in Paris together. 'Cause that's where you go when you are an exiled artist of some kind.

Jennia: Mhm.

Roseanna White: And so they got all of their books together and opened the Library of Burned Books in Paris—and eventually another one followed in New York City, but Paris was the original. And it had every title by every author that was on the banned list. And it was just a place to come and see what the Nazis found so offensive. Right? And through the years, it also became a place where they did research into what they called anti-Nazism, and where they would have big parties when someone released a new book. And it was basically a place to just celebrate freedom of books, right? Freedom of the press. Freedom to write what you want in a place, at the time, that was still free. Of course, when the Nazis rolled into Paris, the, like, number one thing that the government of France did was hand over the keys to this library as a kind of offering. So obviously very different once Nazis were in Paris. But I really wanted to explore, well, what happened then? What happened to this library?

Jennia: Yes! And was it easy for you to find some of these answers or this information? Because I feel like this isn't something that we really hear talked about a lot.

Roseanna White: Yeah, it was not. I did find another really great research book called Burning Books that focused on burning books throughout history, but had a lot on this library in specific. And basically no one knows what happened to it when the Nazis—

Jennia: Oh.

Roseanna White: —came into Paris. Burning Books had no idea. They just said, "We don't know." When Books Went to War said that they kept it under lock and key. Which I found very curious because most libraries that were filled with books that the Nazis didn't approve of were just shut down. And the books were stamped as verboten, they were sent away, they were burned. But this one said, "kept under lock and key." So there was no other information to be found. We know that by the end of the war, only a few of these books that had been in the library had surfaced. Some had ended up in the National Library in Paris.

Jennia: Mmm.

Roseanna White: Most we don't know what happened to them. So it got to be pure fiction. I got to just imagine what would have happened to them. Because, yeah, there was no information to be found.

Jennia: Yeah. So how did you decide then to fill in those gaps? Did you lean into just, again, pure fiction, or did you try to find something that seemed like it would be a pretty believable answer for how people might have reacted or what they might have done, like with Corinne?

Roseanna White: I always try to base it in what's likely, but of course, this is also pure fiction. I have written a lot about espionage and intelligence in the first World War. So I thought it would be really fun to kind of pull that into the Second World War and say, okay, well, I already have some characters who were in France from the first World War who are English, what if they were still there? What would they be doing to try—

Jennia: Oh.

Roseanna White: —to help the Allies after the Nazis came in and were occupying the country, again? And so I was like, all right, well, I'm going to say I have a French heroine who has some secrets hidden in the library. We have to give her a reason to want to be in there—

Jennia: Yes!

Roseanna White: —so she's actually a neighbor. She lives right next door to the library. And then I thought, okay, I want to have a perspective inside the library during the war, which necessitated having someone in the Nazi party who would have been assigned there.

Jennia: Mhm.

Roseanna White: And this was the tricky part, right? How do I make a hero who's a Nazi? (laughs) The answer being he was forced into the Nazi party. And he was forced into a military rank. So there was a specific rank—I'm probably going to mangle the pronunciation, and I am sorry for that. Sonderführer is how it's spelled. I don't know if that's how it's pronounced. And it was a rank specifically created for civilians whose expertise the military needed. So they made Sonderführers  of librarians, of artists, of professors, of engineers. Basically anyone they needed to send into the field to do something, they would give them a military rank so that they would have some authority. But they were forced into it. It was not optional. You do it or someone pays. So I have my librarian professor hero who is forced into this role. And so he views it as, "I'm going to come and do what I can to protect the books."

Jennia: Mhm.

Roseanna White: And so there was actually—the rank given to this person in Paris was called the library protector, in German. But it translates as the library protector. So I created my fictional library protector who actually does want to protect libraries. It's not just saying, "Oh, I'm gonna protect libraries by getting rid of nasty stuff."

Jennia: No, that does bring up another interesting question, and that is the moral dilemmas that so many people face whenever there's any type of wartime conflict or having your country invaded and then doing things that you never would have done if you weren't put in those circumstances. So how did—you talked a little bit about how you explored it with Christian's character, but how did this come out with both of them and even their interactions with each other?

Roseanna White: Yeah. It's always a question. And it's a question even in normal non-war times. Right? What do you take your stands on? What's the hill you're going to die on? And what's just like, yeah I don't need that conflict in my life, right?

Jennia: Right (laughs).

Roseanna White: So I don't think it's something that has one simple answer, but I think it is something we all need to ask ourselves. And, like, I have said many, many years now, I'm just not gonna deal with politics online. That's just not what I want a reputation for. But there are still hills I will die on. And I will talk about my faith, even if it's controversial. And I will talk about books, even when it's controversial. Be like, no, yeah, we can't go banning books. It's not cool. So I think with Corinne, I got to explore the occupied perspective, right—

Jennia: Ahh, yes.

Roseanna White: —of you don't know who to trust. You don't know who is thinking how you're thinking and who is saying, "Well, I just need whatever's going to be normal. I just need to get on with my life." And so many people in France adopted that. And you can't really blame them for it because we all want to just live our lives. And so they were doing it in the best way they could in an occupied country. But there were others who were like, "No, I cannot compromise on who I am and on what I believe, and I cannot give up my country, even if it's occupied." So—

Jennia: Mhm.

Roseanna White: —there was a big movement that was linked to the resistance. But even in the arts community, one author wrote very early on in a magazine article, "There is a France that cannot be invaded." And that kind of became a theme through the book of Corinne is thinking, "There is a France that cannot be invaded, and that's what we have to fight for." But even Christian is thinking of that in terms of his country, of there is a Germany that cannot be invaded. Because he views Germany as an occupied country, too, at this point in time. And so what is that? What's the country we love that exists apart from party politics? That exists apart from whether we're occupied, or at war, or whatever? There's some ideal to our countries that we love and we're raised to love them. Even when those get compromised, is that still worth fighting for? So that's also something the characters have to grapple with.

Jennia: Well, and I know you do dual perspectives a lot, but especially in this one, why was it so important to have those two very different perspectives? And what do you think that it added to the story that would have been missing otherwise?

Roseanna White: Yeah, I think it's so important that we don't villainize people, even when they are our enemy, even when they're on the opposite side, even when we fully believe they are evil, and even when they are out to get us. We have to remember that those people are still beloved children of God. Even if they've rejected it, God still loves them. God loved them so much He sent His son for them. And as Christians, that can be so challenging to us because we see that they're trying to downplay Christianity or they're opposed to Christianity.

Jennia: Mmm.

Roseanna White: Sometimes they're not—they are also claimed to be Christians, but we see ourselves as so different from them. And are we really? Or are we—would we fall into the exact same traps that we think they've fallen into if the situations were reversed? So having these dual perspectives kind of helped me explore the themes of, what does it really mean to take as side? And who are we at our core? And what decisions would we make when put in a hard spot? And, quite often it's not what we think. When you look through history, there were all sorts of wonderful people who turned blind eyes because they don't want to deal with something, or who made a choice that they never would have thought they'd make because they were put in this tight spot. So I just love to encourage us all to think with that heart of compassion and to always be willing to hear someone else's story, because it's going to show you something you didn't know

Jennia: Mhm. Well, so going back more to the time period, why do you think it's important to have something that's undeniably unique about a story that is set during a time that's already been depicted at length in fiction?

Roseanna White: Yeah, that's always the challenge with—I consider World War II its own genre at this point. Like, there are so many—

Jennia: Yes!

Roseanna White: —World War II books. It's not just subgenre of historical fiction, it's like its own genre (laughs). And I thought I'd never write in it because it's so overdone. But when you find those unique perspectives in something, it gets really exciting because people already know enough about the general era that it's not a whole new world you're building, right?

Jennia: Ahh, right.

Roseanna White: They're familiar enough with it that you don't have to explain every single little thing. You can focus on what makes this story unique. And that's what I really loved about the world of The Collector of Burned Books, is everyone knows about Nazi-occupied Paris, but very few people know specifically about the literary culture in Nazi-occupied Paris.

Jennia: Yeah, that's a really good point. And this reminds me of something that I read in an article not that long ago, and they were saying—It was a book—or writing about the 1950s and they were saying it was very similar then. You don't have to describe the diner in detail for instance, because we all have a pretty good idea of what a 50s style diner looks like.

Roseanna White: Yep.

Jennia: And so yeah, that just—I would think that would help with cutting back on all the exposition, and you're able to create that more immediate, urgent sense of what's going on and dive a little bit deeper into the emotions of the characters and then their connection.

Roseanna White: Mhm, exactly. And I always joke that I write about wars, but you rarely ever see the war in my books (laughs). They're always about the people during a war—just happens to be set during a war.

Jennia: Yes! But I think that's what makes sense really though, too, because that's who we connect with. That's how we find a story that we love and is memorable and we want to share with other people because we don't really tend to talk about a concept or something in the same way that we talk about a character we loved and felt like could be our best friend or who we felt sympathetic toward or struggled alongside with. Where we did see those same philosophical questions come up that then made us think and wonder, well, what would I do if I was in this same situation?

Roseanna White: Exactly.

Jennia: Well, were there any differences that you came across when you were trying to find details to incorporate here versus when you've written about other time periods?

Roseanna White: There's a lot more information out there (laughs) and I mean there's a lot more media. Right? Because everything was filmed and there's audio recordings and there's film of stuff and I'm not used to that with most of my historical eras. So that was certainly new. And also, honestly, a little intimidating because there is so much information available, I knew I could not read it all, right?

Jennia: Yes!

Roseanna White: I cannot become an absolute expert because there's just too much. So I had to kind of narrow my scope and be like, okay, I'm going to focus on learning about A through D for this story and that's all I'm going to deal with right now.

Jennia: Yeah. Well, I was thinking, too, about what sort of everyday details did you include and how did this differ for each of the main characters? So you really get a sense of what it was like for this person versus this person.

Roseanna White: Yeah. So I say I found it. It's a very well-known book by a prominent writer who was writing in a journal during the occupation. He refused to publish during the occupation because he didn't want to write for a Nazi held company. And the only publishing companies still open were the ones that had agreed to bring in a Nazi—not an officer, but somebody of the Nazi party, to make sure they were only publishing approved stuff—

Jennia: Oh!

Roseanna White: —So this fellow was just like, "Nah." So he just wrote in a journal. And, eventually, after the war, published this journal. So it was this wonderful insider perspective and it had everything, right? It had how hard it was to get food and how long they're standing in lines. It had how afraid he was to talk to his neighbors. It had the curfews and when the curfews changed—

Jennia: Oh wow!

Roseanna White: —and just all these everyday details. But because he was an author and a teacher, it was also this exact perspective I needed of the literary world and the academic world. And those were kind the two things I was focusing on. So it was just perfect. Like, thank you so much! (laughs)

Jennia: Yes, I can see why that focus would be essential, especially if there is this abundance of information, because I can see it quickly becoming one of those, like, Costco-type situations where—(both laugh)

Roseanna White: Yes.

Jennia: —"Oh no. What am I choosing and what will I be putting in my cart and what will I be leaving on the shelf?" So, yes (laughs).

Roseanna White: Yep, exactly.

Jennia: So do you try to think like your characters? Or how do you go about getting into each character's mindset for depicting the world through their eyes?

Roseanna White: Yeah, I tend to view it as my character's lens. So each character has their unique perspective. And I started thinking about it as my lens back when I was writing Margot in The Number of Love. And her lens was all math, so everything had to be through that math filter. Well, in this case, Corinne and Christian have similar lenses in that they're both in academia and they both deal with books a lot. But they also have very different perspectives in that Corinne is one of very few female professors in France at the time, especially at the elite university called the Sorbonne. There were like three in history at this point in time. I think I added her and her mom in, so made like four or five or something. But so she's had to fight tooth and nail to get where she wanted to be. And she had to really challenge the social norms at the time. Because while women were allowed to have higher education, they were still only permitted in certain boxes. Right?

Jennia: Right.

Roseanna White: Like, England had gone farther at this point, but France was still very patriarchal and very much like, "Ehh, we don't really want you here." So it was quite a feat for her to be a professor. And she's young. So that was her perspective. She's been fighting all her life. So I made her having been a very mischievous child, you know, so we had those memories of getting in trouble. She was always a bit of a rabble rouser and troublemaker. And—

Jennia: Which does fit well for what—(laughs)

Roseanna White: —Yes! Yes, and that's what she needs to be. So she's probably one of my boldest heroines. Like, most of them are more like me and we're like, "Okay, we're just gonna get around this some more intelligent way." She's like, "Nah, I'll punch you in the nose if I have to" (laughs). And not always true of all of my people, but. So then Christian is a very different perspective. He is a German professor and specializes in library science and is the librarian of the University of Berlin. But he's coming from the perspective of he's lost everything.

Jennia: Ohh.

Roseanna White: In the years leading up to the story—I'm not going to give away details because some of them are very important—but even just as the Nazis came in, and his friends were all forced away, and he's suffered loss after loss after loss and is to the point where he's just putting one foot in front of the other and doesn't know what his purpose is anymore. Then when he gets sent to Paris, he's wondering, "Is this my purpose? Does God have me here for a reason? Is there something I can actually do to make a difference?" And that's become unreal because since 1933, there's nothing you can say or do, or you'll be punished for it. So he's wrestling with that kind of coming back to life and you know, what does that mean? What can I do? Yeah. So he's the gentle soul (both laugh) and Corinne is the bold one. So it's a very interesting pairing. But he also has to step very carefully because he makes one wrong move and now he's in the military. And if you get busted in the military for non-Nazi behavior, it's a whole different thing. Right? Like, you're going to be punished very differently. So he's in a very precarious situation of the people below him and the people above him are all watching him like a hawk. What's he gonna do? So he has to step very carefully.

Jennia: Yeah. So how did you bring some of these settings to life then? I'm thinking, especially like the libraries and where the books were held, or even if there are different university or university-adjacent buildings depicted. And were there any resources that you looked to for all of this?

Roseanna White: I mean, a lot of the physical description—luckily, these places have been here forever (laughs). They haven't changed a whole lot since the 40s. So I can just do Google searches and find what the university library looked like and what the national library looked like. So those were the easy parts. Luckily, the book Burning Books did have some photographs of the building that housed—

Jennia: Ohh okay!

Roseanna White: —the Library of Burned Books. So I could use that for my description of that. It was just a house that got turned into a library. So it's a very residential, it-was-never-intended-to-be-a-library, doesn't-look-like-one-from-the-outside sort of building. So that was very helpful for that. And I am one of these people that I see a library sign or see a library on campus (Jennia laughs) somewhere and my heart just goes pitter patter—

Jennia: Yes!

Roseanna White: —Can I just go in? Like, I don't need to touch anything. I just need to go in. So I just kind of laugh at myself. Like, even dropping my daughter off at college—which is the same college I went to. So, you know, I walk by and I see our library and I'm, like, "Oh, let me give you a hug!" sort of thing—

Jennia: Yep!

Roseanna White: —Or the bookstore. So a lot of it was just appealing to that. There's always this library feel to a library. Right? There's always this surrounded-by-books sort of experience. So a lot of it was just, all right, we all know what that feels like. Let's just appeal to that. And then this Library of Burned Books, by the time the Nazis arrived, had fallen into disrepair. It was scarcely used. No one was doing anything in it anymore, mostly. So there was also that kind of sadness of it. A place that was once created for this great ideal, but that was being neglected. So there was that, too, that I got to kind of appeal to of, well, what does it look like when it's neglected? Well, it looks like my bookshelves! It's stacked five deep—

Jennia: Oh, yes! (laughs)

Roseanna White: —in utter disarray (both laugh) Yep. That's how you know you're a real book lover—when your collection outpaces your shelves.

Jennia: Yes. When it's just utter chaos in the background beyond that highlight reel of photos.

Roseanna White: Exactly.

Jennia: Well, so how do you use sensory details to draw the reader into each of these places? And does that differ depending on the setting and the mood you're going for?

Roseanna White: Oh, yeah, for sure. So it's something that, as you train yourself in writing, you kind of train yourself to ask, what are all the senses experiencing? And that's actually what guides my research a lot—

Jennia: Oh!

Roseanna White: —when I'm in a particular scene. Because it's like, okay, she comes out on the street on the Champs-Élysées and the Nazi parade is rolling by. And what would she have been smelling? She'd have been smelling diesel fumes and she'd have been smelling the fuel reserves that were currently burning outside of Paris. So horrible stench. Right? (laughs) Like, not pleasant at all! Noxious fumes! But she'd be hearing the rolling of the treads of the tanks down the streets. Not what you're normally hearing in Paris. Right?

Jennia: Yeah! But love those emotional undertones that it's adding also. Like, this is not some joyous, celebratory parade. Which if you just had it written wording alone, you could miss some of that. But, yeah, adding in those details. Yes.

Roseanna White: Yep. Yep. So—And I have spent all of 18 hours in Paris (both laugh). So we were in England and took a little day trip. But that was enough to tell me what Paris should smell like, right?

Jennia: Ahh.

Roseanna White: You should be smelling the baking bread. You should be smelling all the restaurants. Not the diesel fumes. Like, that's not what you should be experiencing here. So a lot of it is the conflict of what you expect versus what you get. And that really helps paint a picture. And then, again, she's on the Champs-Élysées, and so she's from the academic sector of town—

Jennia: Right.

Roseanna White: —Not the people who shop on the Champs-Élysées, which is the most expensive stores in France, probably. And so what is she seeing there as opposed to what she usually sees? Well, the people walking have shoes, like, she could never afford. Right? We all know what expensive shoes look like—

Jennia: Yep (laughs).

Roseanna White: —and gleaming watches and all this stuff that kind of grabs your senses because it's something different from what you usually experience. So just as you put yourself in the scene and see what is she experiencing through all of her senses, that kind of informs what you're looking up and what details you're putting in there. And that's just what I love, because that's what brings it to life.

Jennia: Oh, for sure. And did you use some of those contrasts, too, even the before versus after, to help show what a difference this was and why this was such a giant upset to see these changes for her?

Roseanna White: Yeah, absolutely.

Jennia: Well, do you have any in particular that you remember or that feel particularly striking to you?

Roseanna White: I mean, there were the ones there in the first scene that I was just talking about. But then, even throughout—Paris is a city of pedestrians, and at this point, there were lots of automobiles. But the streets were empty—

Jennia: Ahh.

Roseanna White: —So most Parisians had evacuated. So there were only a couple thousand people left in the city when the Nazis arrived. And though they trickled back in over the course of months, it never became its full population again during the war. So you have empty streets. The only automobiles on the streets are German automobiles and the ones that the army brought with them. So you're used to seeing people walking around in their very fashionable clothes, because Parisians are fashionable even when you don't live on the Champs-Élysées area. They were just always known for their fashion sense. So you're walking along the street, and instead of seeing the men in their suits and the women in their dresses, you're seeing Nazi uniforms—

Jennia: Oh.

Roseanna White: —And in this dulll, like, green-brown. Right? You're not seeing the bright colors. And at one point, she notes something—which I got from this diary—that all the pigeons died because of the noxious fumes. It took a while. It took several weeks, or maybe even a month or two. But there was a day where the author whose book I was reading said, "It took me all day to figure out what was wrong. And finally my wife said"—

Jennia: Oh my gosh.

Roseanna White: —"'All the pigeons have died.'" So I had to have Corinne noticing that, because if you've been to Paris, there are a lot of pigeons. So many pigeons.

Jennia: Yes! (laughs)

Roseanna White: So Paris without its pigeons is this, like, just shocking thing. Like, if you think of what's abounding wherever you live, it would be like my house without squirrels in the yard. Right? Like, we have (laughs) so many of them—

Jennia: Yeah!

Roseanna White: —which is weird and silent. Right? Because birds provide so much background noise. And to have that suddenly gone, it'd just be so shocking.

Jennia: Yeah. I was thinking that's really ominous as well, because it's almost one of those, like, signs of worse things to come—

Roseanna White: Right?

Jennia: —You know, you think of even the forest when there was a fire or something that you usually see the animals fleeing before you even realize that something is wrong.

Roseanna White: Yes, exactly.

Jennia: So how did this differ with Christian's perspective as someone who is new to this area and wouldn't have had these same comparisons to make?

Roseanna White: Right. So he is coming in from the perspective of, "I've always wanted to see Paris and to do this, but not like this," right? Like, he recognizes that this is not what Paris is supposed to be. I should not be seeing German uniforms. I should not be hearing so much German being spoken. Always some, because it was a very international city. But it shouldn't be like this. The swastika should not be flying from all these buildings. And as somebody who, as he puts it, "I hated the Nazi party before the rest of the world knew they were a problem," right? So this was really hitting him because he saw it come gradually in Berlin, but now in France, he's just seeing what Nazi occupation looks like. And it's horribly striking to him.

Jennia: Yeah, I can see that. So as you were doing some of this research, did you—and you mentioned a diary, which is intriguing. Did you find any really unexpected sources or information that surprised you?

Roseanna White: I mean, most of the sources, they're fairly well known, so I don't know that it would have been surprising to most people, but I have not studied the era before. So just those little details about things like the birds, obviously—

Jennia: Yeah!

Roseanna White: —but even just the curfews and the way the curfews changed. And, like, learning what Christmas was like for the people in the occupation because they had no fuel for heat. They were not permitted things like Christmas trees. Though, every Nazi base had them. They brought them in by the truckloads, but Parisians couldn't get them. And they're rationing their food so much—it was estimated that adults were given 1,300 calories a day. And that's across the board with everything. So that's what little 5'3 me can live on pretty easily. But a grown man? Like, no—

Jennia: Yes!

Roseanna White: —Like, just how hard this was. And France had been—their food had already been rationed for a year because they had the phony war before this where they thought the Germans were going to invade over here so they were preparing for it. But so now it was not a choice. Like, you had to wait in different lines for different things, and go to different stores for different things. And just learning the details of that and how it kind of took what—they had this kind of very relaxed approach to it before, and now it was so regimented.

Jennia: Yeah. I really think that it's these types of details that give it that feeling of authenticity and ground you in that place. Because I'm going to remember the birds now forever (both laugh).

Roseanna White: I know, right? (Jennia laughs) It just strikes you right there.

Jennia: Yes! Well, before we end, do you have any other upcoming projects that you're allowed to share? Or maybe exciting events?

Roseanna White: Oh always! So in the fall, we'll have a Christmas ebook novella coming out from Tyndale that is called The Christmas Book Flood. So it's set in Iceland in the first year of the Jólabókaflóðið, which is the Christmas book flood that bookish people have heard of this a lot on social media—

Jennia: Yes!

Roseanna White: —in recent years. The tradition is you receive books for Christmas and then you sit up on Christmas Eve—because they exchange their gifts on Christmas Eve—and you read your way to Christmas Day. And so I'm, like, yeah! This is just the most awesome thing ever! So I had done some research on that and learned that it started in World War II.

Jennia: Ooo!

Roseanna White: Iceland was actually occupied by the Allies rather than by the Nazis. So very different story. And so I just wanted to explore that origin of this wonderful tradition. So that'll be coming out in the fall in time for Christmas. That'll be October. And then next summer will be my next full length World War II from Tyndale. And that one is currently called The Face of Deception. It could change between now and then (Jennia laughs). We'll see. I just turned the manuscript in the beginning of April. So it's based on a true story of a female head of intelligence in France—

Jennia: Ohh!

Roseanna White: —that she actually was in charge of the largest intelligence network during the war. So a remarkable story. I obviously have to fictionalize some, but based on this really remarkable woman.

Jennia: Well, I will be reading both! (both laugh) Right, thank you again!

Roseanna White: Thank you so much for having me!

Jennia: And thank you for listening. And be sure to check out this show notes for additional information, including all of her links. And then please join me next week when author Brenda Coffee will talk about reclaiming your narrative through memoir. Thanks again!