Jane Healey, bestselling author and host of Historical Happy Hour discusses her latest novel, Goodnight from Paris.
[00:00:00] Jane: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for coming to this webinar. Historical Happy Hour. I, it's a special one. It's just me. I don't have a guest this week. I'm going to talk about the history. Behind Goodnight from Paris. This is the presentation I give to libraries and bookstores and book clubs. And I've been doing it all year and I usually do an online one earlier, but the spring was so busy with different events and stuff.
[00:00:31] I did not end up doing it. So this is a special edition of Historical Happy Hour. Happy new year. And I'm going to. Share my screen in just a sec. We're also trying to go live on Facebook. So hello to anyone who's who's watching this on Facebook right now. And I looked on the list of attendees for tonight and just before we got on here.
[00:00:51] And I just want to say thank you because it's such a great mix of family and friends. And social media friends and friends that I met through book clubs and different events over the past six years. And I'm just so grateful for all your support and for taking time out of your busy week to come. Hi, Sharon.
[00:01:07] She's the first one from Minnesota. Sharon. I don't think you've missed an episode of historical happy hour. Thank you so much. Okay, so I'm going to share my screen and then we're going to dive right in. So, as you know, Goodnight from Paris came out in March of this year and thank you again to everyone who's read it and told your friends about it and book clubs about it.
[00:01:28] I really appreciate all the support there is so I'm going to talk about Lorne Frame before I, before I jump into the story and because I think Lorne, this is a story from February 2020, kind of it. encompasses why I wanted to talk, tell the story of Drue Layton this American actress who moved over to France for love and ended up involved in the war efforts over there.
[00:01:56] So Lauren what is a local veteran in Canada? He was honored by the Royal Canadian Armed Forces. He received the National Order of the Legion of Honor from France. That's the highest military honor you can receive in France for his time as a bomber pilot for the Royal Canadian Armed Forces during the Second World War.
[00:02:15] So this is Lorne in 2020 and this is a speech they gave in Ottawa in his honor at that time. At the age of 20 and on his 13th mission, his plane was attacked by German night fighters. His plane was shot down on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest south of Paris. As he fought to control the descending plane, he ordered his crew to evacuate.
[00:02:38] He was the last person out of the plane. After walking all night, Mr. Frame found himself in the village of Barbizon. There he came into contact with an American woman by the name of Drue Tartiere. Mrs. Tartiere spent the war years assisting the French underground. As she spoke English, Mr. Frame was able to convince her that he was a member of the Allied forces and not a German soldier.
[00:03:02] Mrs. Tartiere hid Mr. Frame in the back of her house, where he was eventually joined by members of his crew. They stayed hidden for seven weeks until Barbizon was liberated in August 1944. As benefits a true hero, Mr. Frame minimizes his contributions and sacrifices. To this day, he praises the women and men of the French underground.
[00:03:25] And in particular, Drue Tartier. So if you've read the book, there is a character in the novel named Lorne, and it's based on this Lorne, but not directly in any way, it's just kind of inspired by Lorne. And Lorne's story is one of many which involved Drue Layton Tartier during the war, and all of these allied pilots she rescued and helped get out of France.
[00:03:48] So this is Lorne back at his house, and he has a copy of Drue Layton's autobiography that she wrote right after the war about her experiences in France. There is, you can get it on, you can find this autobiography online pretty much anywhere, but you cannot it's really hard to find the print edition.
[00:04:05] I actually think Lauren and I are like two of the only people in the world who have print editions. I found mine. I bought it off a guy in the UK on eBay for, A hundred pounds, which is very expensive for a little tiny book, but I really knew I needed to have this source, this primary source and I needed the print edition, and I'm so glad I did, because in the middle of it, there are all these amazing pictures of Drue Layton, Tartier, and her time in France, including this one of her and Lorne, After France is liberated, they're having a party in in her courtyard in Barbizon.
[00:04:43] So, I want to talk about how I first discovered Drue Layton's story. And I did it, actually, I didn't intend to write another World War II novel. As you know, if you're a historical fiction fan, there's a lot of World War II novels out there. There's more coming out all the time but I was researching my novel, The Secret Stealers, and Drue Layton's Heartier came up in several sources, and I was really intrigued by her story, One of the places she came up is there was this story I read about these several hundred American women who were imprisoned in a zoo outside Paris by the Germans.
[00:05:22] They were rounded up after Pearl Harbor. The Germans found as many American expatriate women they could find, rounded them up, put them in buses, and then imprisoned them in a zoo outside Paris. In the monkey house which was so wild. I was like, I couldn't believe this story was real. And I also couldn't believe no one had ever wrote, written about this story before.
[00:05:43] The story, it had all these elements of like comedy and tragedy. The girl at one point, the woman would be joking about the smell of monkey pee. And then the next minute they'd be crying. And one of the women in the zoo was Drue Layton Tartier. And the more I dug into her story, I was like, I can't believe I haven't heard about this woman before.
[00:06:04] She was such an extraordinary person and lived an extraordinary life before, during, and after the war. And so I started to dig deeper and I decided that I had to pitch her story. I wanted to write a book inspired by her Drue's story, but sticks very much to the facts of her life during the war.
[00:06:27] So who was Drue Layton Tartier? She was born, this is her in one of her early movie, movie stills. She was born Dorothy Elizabeth Blackman on 1903 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. She lived in Mexico and was educated in Switzerland. Her family was pretty well to do. At 19 years old, she got married. And got pregnant right away and had a son.
[00:06:53] But that marriage was pretty much doomed from the start. Her husband was older. He was 34. And so they, she actually left her husband and son because she'd always wanted to be an actress. She'd always wanted to go to Hollywood. So she left her husband and son to pursue an acting career in Hollywood.
[00:07:09] And I, I will take questions at the end. I know every time I do this presentation, people are like, she had a son. What's that all about? Because that is not mentioned in the book. So I'll talk about that at the end. So this is one of her stunning pictures from her Hollywood days. She got work, started getting work right away.
[00:07:28] I mean, look at her. She's, you know, she had, she totally has that like 1930s old Hollywood look. And so she started getting smaller parts. These are some of the movies that she was in. Her, the initial movie she was in. This is from one of her Charlie Chan films. I'll get to that. And like a lot of actresses in that day, she did a lot of modeling and advertising jobs on the side.
[00:07:55] I love these pictures. I love this ad for eye cream at the bottom. It says, Drue Layton, a beauty whose eyes are alive, fresh, and sparkling, and kept that way with proper care. I don't think she really needs eye cream looking at these pictures, though. I'll be honest. If you read the book, you know she was a huge dog lover.
[00:08:13] She had a dog in France named Andi. And when she was in Hollywood, she had this Great Dane. I was fortunate enough to get her scrapbooks from her family from her Hollywood days. And her, and actually she had some scrapbooks. From after the war as well. And she loved this dog so much. I don't know his name, but there was more pictures in the scrapbook of this dog than, like, people.
[00:08:35] And so, someone did this cartoon, though, because the dog would terrorize people on these Hollywood sets. And this is Drue Layton in her prize winning Great Dane, on which she is taking out a 20, 000 bite insurance policy after he got tough with the actor who played Charlie Chant. 20, 000 in the 1930s, mind you.
[00:08:58] So, Charlie Chan, those movies were really what put her on the map. She's ended up starring in several of them as kind of the blonde sidekick. These are three that she was most known for. Charlie Chan in London, Charlie Chan's Courage, Charlie Chan at the Circus. She was now on the movie posters. She was an up and coming starlet.
[00:09:21] She was finally getting noticed. And this is a quick clip. Mr. Chan, have you seen Lake? Yes. What did he say? What did you find out? Nothing. He is dead. What? Charlie made that clip and I laugh every time at where he ended it. So she, you know, her star's on the rise in Hollywood. She's doing really well.
[00:09:46] She takes a break. She's offered a role on Broadway. So she takes a break to perform on Broadway in 1937. And there she meets Jacques Tartier. And it is a whirlwind romance. They are, it's love at first sight. She then is offered a job to perform in London's West End. And she goes and reunites with Jacques in London's West End.
[00:10:09] And by 1938, Jacques and Drue were married and living in Paris. This is the only picture we've ever been able to find of the two of them together from a French newspaper. It's a Jacques Terrain, actor and officer, French actor and officer he was actually, he was trying to get into acting as well.
[00:10:29] He certainly had the looks for it but it wasn't really successful at that. So Jacques Terrain was actually his, his cover name, his name that he used on his stage name. So, of course. This is just about the worst time to move to Paris as France is getting involved in the war and Jacques had health issues so he could not actually go to war with, join the French Armed Forces, but he got a job as a translator with the British Armed Forces.
[00:10:58] And at this time, it was still relatively easy to get out of the country to leave. And, Jacques and Drue's family and all of their friends wanted her to go back to America until and wait out the war, but she refused to leave because she wanted to be close to Jacques. She had a large network of friends, expatriates and, and French, French friends, and so she said, I absolutely not.
[00:11:22] I want to be here if he can take leave, which he inevitably, inevitably did. And and her housekeeper, Nadine, became also like a sister to her. Again, if you read the novel, you know that. This is a picture of the real Nadine, actually. And that's also from her autobiography. So, not a lot of acting jobs for American actresses in France during the war.
[00:11:48] But she's offered a job with the French government. The French Ministry of Information offers her a job with their radio station called Radio Mondial. And she was essentially the first voice of America broadcasting what was really happening in Europe. And she, it was quite successful. She started out Kind of just doing like light fluffy pieces about French culture and a day in the life of French family.
[00:12:14] But as time went on, she got more and more political and talking about what was really happening because she was trying to convince. And the, and the French government through Drue was trying to convince the Americans that they could no longer ignore what was happening in Europe, and Americans involvement was going to be inevitable.
[00:12:33] But at the time, America was very isolationist post World War I, and there were figures like Charles Lindbergh who were quite anti Semitic and advocated for no involvement in the war. So Drue is really pushing and, and trying to make America understand what's happening. On in on the mainland of France, and she becomes so good at her job.
[00:12:54] That on German radio, they start announcing that she is one of the people that would be executed as soon as France is occupied. And they didn't just announce this once, they announced it several times. But she kept broadcasting. So, so, she kept broadcasting until, of course, June 1940, when Paris Falls and so at this point, she's terrified because she thinks that there's a list and with her name on it and they're going to execute her if they figure out where she is.
[00:13:27] So she drops Layton and starts going by Drue Tartier from this point on someone, you know, her real name was Dorothy or nickname was Drue. Someone said, well, why didn't she just change it to Dorothy? I don't know, but she, she changed it the last, her last name to Tartier and. Leaves Paris on June 10th when Paris fell with the caravan of her co workers from Radio Mondial.
[00:13:52] But, you know, that, from that point on, they were still broadcasting, they were still trying to report what was going on, but it didn't, it wasn't, Long before Drue realized she had to, to stop radio broadcasting and find a place to lie low. So she eventually relocates to the village of bar is on, which is an hour outside Paris.
[00:14:12] And she also, but she keeps her apartment in Paris as well. So just a quick context. This is a map of occupied France and World War Two. And when it was initially occupied in 1940 the occupied zone was in the north, of course. The Germans took over all of the coastline. The so called Free Zone was in the south.
[00:14:36] This was governed by a French government in the city of Vichy. But the Vichy French government was really collaborating with the Germans from the start. And then by 1942, Germany had occupied all of France. So June 14th June 13th, sorry, June 14th, Parisians awoke into the sound of a German accented voice saying curfew was imposed and Germany occupied Paris by that evening.
[00:15:04] The Germans had occupied the city. Hitler was not there on that day, but this is a famous photo of him in front of the Eiffel Tower. He only visited Paris once during the war. Another famous photo. So this picture on and several others like it were used as propaganda by the Germans to say, Look, there are German soldiers in the city of Paris, but Parisians are going about their life.
[00:15:30] Everything's fine. Everything's great. But of course, right underneath the surface, things were not great. This is another fairly famous photo. You'll see everyone has, you know, horses and wagons and bicycles. Because they had no gas, the Germans had all the gas German signs went up on every corner like this.
[00:15:51] One of the acts of resistance by teenagers would be to, like, kind of swap the signs around to try to get the Germans lost. Again, horses and buggies and all sorts of contraptions to, to get around the city. So Drue is sure that any day now, some, you know, right after Paris fell that the Germans would be knocking on her door and imprisoning her and executing her.
[00:16:15] So she decides to relocate to Barbizon with Nadine. They, they lease a house right on the main street of Barbizon. It's a very small village. The house, the, the villa looks. Villa squirrels, it was, it was called looks relatively small from the outside, but it actually goes pretty far back. There's a courtyard and two other cottages in the back of the courtyard, which will come and handle you later for Drue in the war.
[00:16:42] By the way, you can rent this on Airbnb for 141 a night. I just checked. They're still renting it. So it was interesting to see the layout of the inside of it. So Drue and Nadine decide they, they feel like they need to do something. So they start growing vegetables and they were neither of them had any farming experience, any gardening experience, but they start growing vegetables in the courtyard.
[00:17:04] They start taking in geese and chicken and pigs. So they could try to help. Feed their friends in Paris, where food was getting scarcer and scarcer by the day. This is a funny side. So I, we have a couple of. Black and white prints in our hallway going up to the second floor of our house here in Melrose.
[00:17:23] And I was walking up the stairs when I was researching and writing this Good Night from Paris. I walked up the stairs one night and I looked over at the picture and I realized that Villa Squirrel is on our wall. It's the same right there. And I never even looked at down here. It says Barbizon, which is Remarkable.
[00:17:43] And just one of those creepy, weird coincidences in life. So I had to throw that into the presentation as well. So life in Barbizon for a little while, I call this Drue's calm before the storm during the war. So she is growing vegetables and they're doing pretty well with that, even though they have no idea what they're doing.
[00:18:04] And all the farmers in the area were teasing them. Her boss, John. From Radio Paris Mondial comes out to Barbizon as well to Lilo. He's started to work. He's he's been working with the resistance and this is Drue's first interaction with the French resistance. He convinces Drue and Nadine to keep the villa in Barbizon, but also lease a farm on the outskirts of the village where he can conduct resistance activities.
[00:18:34] You know, they were, they were, Dropping supplies from other countries and different things like that and have, he can have meetings out there and Drue and Nadine decide that they're gonna, you know, become real farmers and grow some more food out there as well. And all this time Drue is going by last name Tartier and remarkably remains hidden in plain sight.
[00:18:56] And people always asking, how could she do that? And I think, from what I read at the time, you know, the Germans were not as as organized in terms of paperwork and everything else as that they seemed she is. So, you know, they didn't have this this list. They didn't have, you know, her where she was living.
[00:19:15] And so that's how she kind of was able to stay below the radar. Until of course, September 1942. And this is where we get to the story I talked about in the beginning of the presentation about the zoo. So, America is now involved in the war Pearl Harbor happens, America's involved in the war, and then several months later, The Germans go around, throughout Paris and its surrounding villages and they arrest several hundred American women including Drue.
[00:19:47] They knock on her door in Barbizon, and they make her get in a car with them and and leave Nadine behind. And they, now the Germans were arresting all these American women, they were saying it was retaliation for Americans. Arresting German women in America, and that was a complete fabrication of course, but that was the pretense that they were using to arrest them all.
[00:20:10] So, several hundred American women are imprisoned in this zoo outside Paris. They were there for two days And they were, after that, they let all the women who had children below the age of 12 go, and all the women who were over the age of 65 go. But everyone else, all the other prisoners in the zoo, were put on buses and sent to an internment camp, a prison camp, in a town in the mountains called Vatel.
[00:20:43] And to be clear though, Vattel was monitored by the International Red Cross, so it was not as brutal in terms of conditions as some of the other obviously concentration camps that we've heard about in the horrific stories there. It was prison, it was not, it was not great. They were, they were imprisoned in these old hotels that had no heat but they had food, they had medical You know, they have a small hospital there.
[00:21:10] So there, these women are taken and they're imprisoned in Vatel prison camp with several hundred British women who had been there for quite some time, including many nuns. There was several nuns staying in this prison, imprisoned in this prison camp as well. So as soon as Drue gets to Vatel, she is determined to get out.
[00:21:32] She has to say she concocts this whole plan where she. She gets a doc, a doctor in the camp to write a note saying that she's dying from cancer. And that she must be released to be treated in Paris and she decided this doctor in the camp who was a Jewish doctor who was forced to to work in this camp just agrees to give her medicine to make her look like she was incredibly ill.
[00:21:58] And and to tell and to ask for her to be released to to go back for treatment in Paris and Drue takes it to the extreme. She is an actress and she not only was acting the part, but she gets herself very, very sick from taking this medicine to make her look like basically she was dying from ovarian cancer.
[00:22:17] And so she was actually released. She was one of the first prisoners released from the camp. The head doctor there finally agreed and believed her. And so these are her release papers. She was freed on in December. I can't see this, wait a minute, and, excuse me, let me go back,
[00:22:43] she was freed in December, and if you read the translation of her release papers, it basically was like, gave her a free pass to go back and forth from Barbizon to Paris whenever she wanted. And because these, the head doctor at the camp thought that she was dying, so they didn't think she'd be around that long.
[00:23:02] They didn't think that she'd use this pass, this travel pass, for anything else, but, you know. If you're involved with the resistance, of course, this was like a golden ticket. So she's released, but when she first gets back to Barbizon, she's incredibly sick. She can barely walk. She's immediately approached again by the resistance, you know, saying, can you help us?
[00:23:23] Can you help? You know, they had a number of different things going on, and they need, they wanted her help, and she said, no, I don't think I can. I need to recover. But at this time in the war, Allied planes, Canadian, French, I mean, Canadian, British and American planes were crashing in the areas all over France all over the countryside and outside Paris.
[00:23:44] And because her neighbors knew she was American, many of them were knocking on her door at all hours in the night, being like, we have a, an American in my, our apple tree, and he doesn't speak English, and can you help us? And we need to get him out, and he's injured. And so, of course, a lot of these aviators were like 18, 19, 20, and Drue felt compelled to get involved with the Underground Network, which was a network of people and places.
[00:24:12] It was a network of people and safe houses that got these. Boys really got them, hid them, got them better if they were injured, got them paperwork and money to get them out of Paris and out of the country of France through, through this network of houses and people. There was a big group of doctors and in Paris proper that had, had organized it and Drue knew some of them.
[00:24:38] And then of course the resistance members in the area. We're also involved Drue gets involved with the this underground network and she provides food and clothing and false papers and she has she has a network of her own friends and in Paris and a lot of them agree to hide these aviators in Paris and beyond in their tiny little apartments.
[00:25:02] Really generous and amazing. She is, of course, is working as a translator and she aids in the escape of many, many British. American and Canadian flyers, but then, of course, as the war is winding down, the underground network has to shut down because they know that Paris France is about is going to be liberated.
[00:25:23] So she and Drue ends up hiding 5 of these aviators at her villa in Barbizon for several weeks at the end of the war, including Lauren, who I talked about at the beginning of the presentation. So France is liberated in August 1944 the village of Barbizon has a huge party to celebrate the end of the war as, as people did all over France.
[00:25:47] And Drue, and it was really reading about it in her autobiography that she had hid these boys, these five allied Yeah. Aviators in her villa for 8 weeks, her and Nadine, and the day that that France is liberated, you know, Drue, Drue and Nadine made sure that the, these guys had haircuts and had their uniforms all cleaned up and they walked out the front door of the villa in Barbizon and everyone in the village lost their minds because they couldn't believe that these allied aviators had been hiding for so long and, and nobody had any idea.
[00:26:23] So by the, Okay. At the end of the war, Drue had assisted in helping over a hundred allied flyers escape France via the underground network, and she overseen, she had overseen directly the escape of at least 42 American, British, and Canadian flyers. And this is the picture that I showed you at the beginning of the presentation.
[00:26:47] This is Lauren Frame, that's Andi the dog in kind of an action shot. Lieutenant Charles Whipple. Bill Watson so really extraordinary. So after the war, she writes her memoir, this autobiography about her time and her experiences. She receives several awards from both France, Canada. America and and the U.
[00:27:12] K. and she goes on tour in the U. S. and talks about her experiences, which and so these clips are also from her scrapbooks, which her family generously allowed me to use for this presentation and for my research. It's another clip. And the other cool part about this part of her life is she was able to reunite with many of the flyers that she rescued while she was touring the U.
[00:27:41] S. But you know, like a lot of these lesser known stories in history you know, she was celebrated, she was honored, and then, I mean, I had never heard of her. Her story was Kind of forgotten and left behind and so that's what like my other novels. That's what really Inspired me to write about her I want to talk a little bit before I take questions and I talk about what happened to Drue after the war about some of the other women that were really remarkable and that were friends and acquaintances of Drue during the war and this this woman Dorothy Thompson With just another one, like I had heard her name, but didn't really know much about her, but she was this incredible American journalist.
[00:28:25] She was. One of the only female international journalists at the time. She lived and worked in Berlin in the 1930s and was actually the first to interview Hitler. And she saw from the first time she spoke to him, When she saw what was happening in Berlin, she saw this, the, the threat that he was and the Nazis were to the world, and she was the first one to start writing about it and writing critically about him and trying to, and banging her head against the wall, trying to get America to pay attention to what was happening.
[00:28:58] She knew that America's involvement in World War II was inevitable. If you read her writing from the 30s, it was just chilling. She, she predicted all of it. And so she, she. Talked. So, you know, she was her press about Hitler, of course, was so negative that he expelled her from Germany in 1934. And there's this scene she describes where all the international journalists in Berlin walk her to the train station and give her American red roses, and so she was basically kicked out of the country by Hitler.
[00:29:33] This is in Madison Square Garden, and I shared this. Recently on Instagram, because it was this, this quote, I think is pretty evergreen. Unfortunately, this is from a, this quotes from a radio address. She had a syndicated radio show and a syndicated column in newspapers all over the country. And I'll just read it.
[00:29:54] This crisis is not a Jewish crisis. It is a human crisis. We who are not Jews must speak, speak our sorrow, our disgust and our indignation in so many voices so that they will be heard. This is her, as I said, this picture is from Madison Square Garden, it was a pro Nazi rally of 20, 000 people who came to this pro Nazi rally to hear speeches, and she was not supposed to be there, she's in the front row, the front row of the press here.
[00:30:21] She's not supposed to be there that night. She was actually going to an award ceremony for, she was being honored somewhere else in New York City, and she decided to turn the car around and got herself a press pass to be in the front row of this, of this pro Nazi rally and heckled every single speaker.
[00:30:38] That took to the stage and had to be escorted out under security. Cause if you look at the people behind her I mean, she was definitely put herself in danger that night, but really an extraordinary woman. And oh, this, the rallies from February, 1939, by the way, German American Bund sponsored it.
[00:30:59] Josephine Baker is a character in the novel because she was also like Dorothy Thompson was on Drue's radio show. several times and she fled America for just acceptance and adulation in France. She is Revered to this day in France she was a singer and a dancer and an actress, and I don't get into this in the book so much, but she also aided the French resistance by smuggling allied intelligence out in sheet music in her sheet music because she could travel abroad freely because she was so famous and such a big entertainer.
[00:31:37] Sylvia Beach was actually imprisoned in the zoo along with Drue, and then she was also imprisoned in Vittel, the internment camp. She was the owner of the famous Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris first publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses. She was a dear, dear friend of Ernest Hemingway.
[00:31:55] There's a story about Hemingway when the war ends and he's, he gets back and he's yelling in the streets of France for Sylvia, Sylvia, and she comes running out and jumps into his arms. She was very petite, she's that big. So yeah, she was not roommates with Drue in the Fattel Prison Camp. I, that was poetic license that I took there, but they were friends and acquaintances and actually.
[00:32:19] Sylvia helped entertain the ally flyers that were trying to escape the country by hanging out with them, telling them stories, lending the books, things like that. And she did that through, through Drue's acquaintance. So really interesting that I had pretty much finished the manuscript and decided that, you know, I wanted to try to find if there was any of Drue's descendants alive, because if it was my grandmother, I would want to know that someone was writing a book about her.
[00:32:49] So I found her grandson through Ancestry. com and and connected with her, the grandson and granddaughter of Drue, and they were. Both lovely and generous, and the granddaughter actually sent me Drue's scrapbook. She shipped them across country so that I could make photocopies of all and, you know, scan all of these things and all these amazing, amazing pictures, Drue only had one son, and that was the one she had when she was very, very young at age 19, and these, this grandson and granddaughter are the son and daughter of that one son. I don't go into the, the son in the novel because, frankly, I just, I didn't have enough information about him and their relationship, and I didn't feel comfortable writing about something that I just didn't, and making something up about a person that is, was a real person and could have still been alive, and And so I didn't talk about the sun.
[00:33:45] But they, of course, she left for Hollywood and then she left for Europe. And so was she, she was quite estranged from the sun for, for a long time. And then they, they reconciled in later years. But she, she did, you know, people always ask, what did she do after the war? She toured America and talked about her experiences, and then she went back to Paris.
[00:34:07] She said, France is my home now. I am going to move back to Paris. And, and she moved there and lived there until her 70s, and then she moved back to California. To be closer to family. So she did remarry after the war too. She married the head of the International Tribune in Paris. Geoffrey Parsons was his name and they had a long happy marriage.
[00:34:33] People like Inside Baseball about cover design. So I'm just going to share these real quickly. When I, I, my publisher is very, like, gives me, lets me have a lot of input into cover designs. I don't have the final say, but I get some say, and I just, I, the only thing I felt super strong about was not, not having a huge big Eiffel Tower in the front of the cover because I felt like there was just So many Eiffel Tower books.
[00:34:58] And so I was really excited about getting the concepts, cover design concepts. So excited. It's always so fun. And I, the night before I got them, I said, I just don't want that huge Eiffel Tower cover, Charlie, please make sure they don't do that. And then. Of course, they sent me the three Eiffel Tower cover pictures covers.
[00:35:15] So yeah, and totally missed the mark. We were not on the same page. Went back to the drawing board with my editors. She loved these and I can see why they're beautiful. It just was not the vibe I was looking for. And also you know, Drue was a real person in history and I really felt strongly that her likeness, I know we couldn't use a real photo, but her likeness was on the cover.
[00:35:39] So then they came back with these and you know, I like them all, but this one I really loved. And so we tighten this up and because Eiffel Tower sell books, apparently when they're on the cover this is what we ended up with. But there's a Eiffel Tower in the in the corner of the, of the.
[00:35:56] Final cover. Oh, so book number 5. This is blank because I thought I'd be able to share. But I, I, I'm still going through the process of, you know, contract negotiations with my publisher. So, I can't say too much. I thought I'd be able to have something more here, but I will say that it's. It looks like it's coming.
[00:36:18] The contracts come together and this book will not be World War Two. It will be early Cold War. That's what I can share. And that's about it for now. But stay tuned. I'm gonna you know, of course I will be shouting it from the rooftops when it happens. This is my little PSA that I, I include at the end of every presentation when I'm out and about.
[00:36:40] Of course, word of mouth is the best marketing. My editors always say you can do all the kind of social media and everything else in the world, but word of mouth is everything. And so I thank you all for spreading the word and for telling book clubs and libraries and indie bookstores about my books.
[00:36:57] And, you know, I, a reminder, I Zoom with book clubs all over the country and Canada. So anytime, and I love doing it. It's super fun and easy. So if you don't know any book clubs that like historical fiction and would like to Zoom with me, keep that in mind. Thank you for. Subscribing to the mailing list and obviously podcast and YouTube.
[00:37:16] If you like the podcast, if you can leave a review, that would be awesome. Because that helps other people find it. That's kind of how it works for that. And obviously posting online reviews is great. Thank you for all of you who have done that as well. Now, I'm super excited about this. So, historical happy hour.
[00:37:35] Started three years ago, and it was me and Charlie, and it was my publicist, Anne Marie Nieves fabulous idea, and I, I really loved doing it, and, but it was getting a little overwhelming to just do for me and Charlie, so Anne Marie is, I don't think she's on here tonight, but she is helping us out in terms of producing and, and booking authors, and I'm so psyched for the lineup.
[00:38:01] We have in the next few months. You can register for all of them on my website. Now, the registrations are all up and, you know, of course, if you subscribe to my mailing list, you'll get those invitations as well for the 3 year anniversary. We have. Kristen Hannah, which I'm like, totally fangirling about because she's amazing.
[00:38:19] But all these others Avery Cunningham has this great debut coming out. I'm talking to her next week. So you can sign up for that. She's getting tons of buzz for the mayor of Maxwell Street. Allison Pataki is amazing. Finding Margaret Fuller. The Sicilian Inheritance by Joe Piazza. So excited about that.
[00:38:37] And then, of course the great Kate Quinn and Janie Chang are coming as well. And I'm excited for all of these books and these authors. And so definitely sign up if you are interested in attending those webinars. It's all on my website already. So now I'm going to stop sharing the screen and I would love to take any questions that you have.
[00:38:58] I will look in. The webinar chat and in the Q& A. So, oh, Charlie has questions from Facebook. Any news on a movie deal? I wish. No, again, that would be something I'd be shouting from rooftops too. But you know, my agent works very hard and, you know, hopefully you can dream. How much time do you work on research versus writing?
[00:39:20] What is your research process? I, Spend just to get the proposal done for my publisher. It's which is like the first 30 pages. And a synopsis. I spent probably about six months just doing the research and kind of figuring out if there's a story there for that. And then and then, of course, when we go to contract, I'm still researching for a while.
[00:39:43] And I'm very much an outliner and a planner, I think, because it just helps me try to stay organized. So I I plot and plan out my book, and I'm, I'm, I do a bulk of research up front just to feel comfortable with the subject, but I'm always researching along the way, particularly for things like culture, food, language, things like that.
[00:40:04] What happened to Jacques? That would be a spoiler but since this is, I promise we talk spoilers, I will say that He was killed in Syria. He was shot in the back when he was trying to rescue one of his fellow countrymen. So very, very sad. Sharon Pearson asks, where did you get the picture you said you had in your hallway on a research trip?
[00:40:26] No, that was Charlie picked up a couple of black and white. Prints of France at like an antique store that we just really liked. And so yeah, it wasn't even like I, and we, we did that like 10 years ago. It wasn't even related to any sort of research or anything else. So that was pretty crazy.
[00:40:45] I'm going to, oh, Karen, I'm going to look at the Q and A here. How did she manage to keep her identity secret from Germans once they invaded? Karen O'Donnell, thank you for asking. Yeah, so that was the thing. Like, she changed, she started using her Mary name, Tartier and she, that, and she just hid in plain sight.
[00:41:03] And she was really shocked when they finally went through her paperwork. She, they had a whole file on her. Yeah. At, you know, towards the end of the war, she was able to see, because she had to check in with them when she was going back and forth for so called hospital treatments after she got out of the prison, and they didn't have anything, they never made the connection between the Drue Layton on the radio and the Drue Tartier.
[00:41:25] Which I thought was really fascinating since she just was, remained hidden in plain sight. Cheryl Hagman, what are you working on now? I'm working on this new early Cold War story that I can't say too much about until the contract's done, but I can't wait to share more about it because I'm super excited about it.
[00:41:44] So yes, Sharon, I reached out to her relatives. Oh, yeah. Okay. So you, you heard this from the end of the of the presentation. Yeah, the pictures are super, super cool. Nancy asks, how do you approach libraries for your research? For example, how specific are you with your questions? You know, it kind of depends.
[00:42:01] I mean, I, I like to have the physical books. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For research, so I, I do use libraries quite a bit, but I also get a lot of used books on online for these for the topics. There's a lot of great online sources. There's a lot of libraries now that have digitized files that you can find online.
[00:42:20] So that's been, that was great. Actually the Holocaust Museum in D. C. had a huge Treasure trove of digitized letters from the Tartier family, including a bunch from Drue's time when she was living and working in Paris. And those were amazing. Cause they helped me like get a real sense of her voice and who she was.
[00:42:42] So so, you know, it's amazing the different sources you can find out there, but primary sources like letters like that are just so huge for research. Let's see, I'm looking at the, I'm missing some questions here. I cried when her husband and John died. Courtney. Thank you. Me too. Let's see. Is French your favorite place to visit?
[00:43:03] Sharon asks. Yeah, it's right up there. We actually went to Paris for my daughter's senior trip in November and it was amazing to be back. Are you going to do a talk? Courtney asks. Hi, Courtney. A talk at Whitelam Bookstore and Writing Again. I definitely hope to. I love, I love those folks. I love Whitelam and BookSims and Winchester and Molly's here and Melrose.
[00:43:23] Such awesome people. Tricia, how long was the average process? I would say Six months for the comp for the proposal and synopsis and then six to eight months before I have to get a draft to my editor. That doesn't mean it's the final draft. It just has to be as solid and tight as I can get it on my own.
[00:43:42] And then we go through, you know, however many drafts that it takes Oh, such a nice comments. Everyone, you know, amazing. Thank you, Marsha. And Courtney, did I miss anyone else for questions? I think we're good. Oh, there's a couple more here. Does Drue still have good friends in France? From whom you heard of heard upon publication of this book, Mary, where they didn't ask.
[00:44:10] That's a good question. I haven't heard. I, you know, I, I've only heard from her grandson and granddaughter. I haven't heard from anyone else who knew her. That would be amazing. I mean, I know, like, with being town girls I still hear from. People who had a family member or friends or someone involved in the Red Cross Club Mobile Girls Program and then the Saturday Evening Girls Club in Boston's North End.
[00:44:33] I, I, I actually met a woman whose, whose grandmother was Saturday Evening Girl. So that I love, I love, love, love those connections. So it'd be really nice to, to find someone else who you know, find some people who, who knew Drue personally. Let's see. Any others? I
[00:44:54] think. Oh, do you think her acting skills helped her in her deceptions? Any more thoughts on that? Karen O'Donnell. I definitely do. Like, if you read, If you know, reading her autobiography, like, absolutely, she was, she could play a role. And, and also she was, if you look, I mean, you saw our pictures, she's quite beautiful and charming.
[00:45:15] And so I think she also was able to just charm the doctors too. So, yeah, I think her acting absolutely helped. I don't know. You know, her friends in the prison and the doctors there were really alarmed at how far she took it in terms of the medicine she took to make herself so sick. But her acting also helped as well.
[00:45:35] Let's see. Has the book been translated into French? Not yet. What, where is it? We got a foreign rights, translation rights thing recently. I can't remember. It was a smaller country. But not yet. I guess the French are pretty fickle about American fiction is, is what I hear from my agent. So, you know, fingers crossed.
[00:45:55] We'll see. Tricia asks, Hi, Tricia. Was it easy to find the relatives through Ancestry? It was very easy. It was surprisingly easy. But I think that you know, it kind of just depends. Like, some people are really into Ancestry and, and Drue's grandson was one of those people and that's how we were able to that's why, how we were able to find her find him and Tracy, the granddaughter through Tracy is the, was the one in charge of her state, like inherited her house in California, had all the scrapbooks and everything.
[00:46:23] Oh, do you know the med that was, that she was given to bleed? I do not, you know, not offhand. I'd have to look back. I think it was listed in the book, but I can't remember in the autobiography rather. But I can't remember off the top of my head. Barbara Harrington, I was never interested in World War II books until I read yours.
[00:46:40] Thank you so much. Thank you for some very interesting novels. So sweet. Thank you. Y'all are amazing. I wish I could thank every single one of you individually, because you're all amazing. I think that's all the questions. I hope I got everyone's we sorry. I was a little convoluted at the beginning of this.
[00:46:57] It was, we tried to go Facebook live tonight and we're trying to do some different things. Tech wise. So it's a little bit frazzled, but I'm so, so grateful and honored that to everyone who came tonight and everyone who comes to the Historical Happy Hours, or if I've met you at a book club or at a bookstore or library or another event.
[00:47:16] Thank you. It means everything. And, you know, please keep in touch. And definitely I hope to see you at some of the upcoming Historical Happy Hour webinars, because I think they're going to be really awesome because these authors are amazing. So, so thanks again for a great night and for all your support and yeah, keep in touch.
[00:47:33] Have a great night. Everyone take care.