2023: the birth of a new book
Since book 5 in The Resistance Girl Series, The Highland Raven, came out, I took a short break from writing about my main topic World War 2. In the interim I launched a new historical detective series, titled The Mrs Imogene Lynch Series. I also moved to another part of Holland at the end of December ‘22 and became a first-time grandmother in January. All very exciting but very distracting from my WW2 writing schedule! :-)
In January 2023 I began writing The Crystal Butterfly, my newest book in The Resistance Girl Series. This book is about the Dutch Resistance. It was a Godsent to be able this time to do all my groundwork ‘around the corner’ and I’ll share plenty of my (on the spot) research with you on this blog.
I took the time to deep-dive into the new story and get to the heart of my heroine’s journey before and during WW2. Her name is Edda Van der Valk and in The Crystal Butterfly she will take you through her Dutch war years.
As I now live close to Den Bosch - which is in the centre of Holland - I can easily travel to the most important places of action during WW2 in this country. So let me take you with me on my field trips as I retrace my steps to that gruesome part of our history, now some 80 years ago.
Few people living through WW2 are still with us today. The medalled-up veterans and bravely surviving Jews have become sparse centenaries, whose live presence in TV shows and newspaper articles are almost non-existent. WW2 is now almost history, lived through by the generation of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. But I still feel it is my duty to keep the history alive LEST WE FORGET.
The Crystal Butterfly is also inspired by - though far from identical to - Audrey Hepburn’s Dutch war years, so I’ll take you to places where she lived and spent some of the most arduous years of her life. And, of course, Anne Frank cannot be ignored in a book that is centred heavily on the deportations of Dutch-based Jewish people. After all, the arrest of Edda’s big love, Asher Hoffmann, was her reason for joining the Resistance.
PS For avid readers of my blog you may notice I have a new website and miss the abundant archive of years of research on many European countries during the World Wars. Fear not for it will return in an even clearer and more user friendly way.
