Lisa London

When my neighbor Hilde mentioned how much she had enjoyed her Hitler Youth group, I was intrigued. Not long after that, I was helping my 100 year-old Granny pack up things and found a beautiful embroidered tablecloth that looked almost new.
“Granny, I’ve never seen you use this. Why not?”
Sadness engulfed my grandmother’s face. “My brother, Bud, told me he got it off a German family when he was in the war. Every time I used it, I pictured that poor German family with a bare table.”
Needless to say, it broke my heart to see my grandmother so sad. When I mentioned it to my German neighbor, Hilde stopped me.
“Tell your grandmother, her brother helped a German family. We were starving after the war. People would trade their table linens for food. If the American soldiers had not ignored the non-fraternization rules, many of us would have starved.”

Not only did this make my grandmother feel much better, at that point, I knew I had a novel that had to be written–a World War II novel written from the German civilian perspective.

That is hard. Most of my early readers want to know what happens to Hedy next, but I am thinking about following Gerda to the Eastern Bloc. We'll see.