Listen to my WWII Playlist on Spotify

I’ve listened to lots of WWII music while writing. I needed to place myself in that time period to try and feel what it was like to be living then. Click here to listen to my favorites.

Author Q & A for Dear Nora

After writing two non-fiction books, what made you want to tell this story as historical fiction?

I’ve given many book talks over the last ten years. Attendees often shared their military family member’s WWII story during Q & A. Those deeply personal stories were usually about the suffering a relative endured during their service—physical injuries, but more often mental. I often heard, “My Dad never talked about the war.” Many U.S. soldiers returning from WWII did not discuss their war experiences in part because they thought their stories would be too shocking. Their silence often resulted in more trauma—alcoholism, broken marriages, and lost jobs. People thought at the time that soldiers could just come home untouched and continue to live their lives as before.

The stories I heard at book talks inspired me to write about PTSD, then called ‘shell shock’ or ‘combat exhaustion.’ I also wanted to learn more about WWII PTSD treatments and outcomes. My first two books are based on family letters. Fresh out of family letters, I needed to create a character who had intimate experience with soldiers damaged by war.

Why did you choose a nurse for the main character?

A neuropsychiatric nurse would have immediate experience with the many ways PTSD manifested in soldiers—anxiety, depression, sleep issues, anger, tremors, hallucinations, phantom pain, hysterical paralysis, inability to speak, schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, paranoia, and psychoneuroses. To create the character of Nora, I immersed myself in the stories of WWII nurses and Red Cross volunteers. I read memoirs, Army Nurse Corps training materials, veteran’s testimonies, hospital unit histories, countless letters home, newspaper articles, and listened to dozens of oral histories of WWII nurses, patients, and RAMPS (POWs). The character Nora is an amalgamation of these brave women who served.

Why did you choose to write in epistolary form?

I’ve always loved books written in epistolary form. I treasure letters from my family members as gifts of love full of important family history. Letters are conversational—you write as if you were speaking. It takes time and thought to compose and mail a letter. My father had a special birthday gift he liked to give others—he would send the person a handwritten letter every day for a month. During WWII, letters were the only way that loved ones in the U.S. could communicate with their children away at war. No phone calls, texts, or emails.

What complications arise by writing in letter form?

Letters took from ten days to six weeks to travel back and forth between the U.S. and Europe during the war. The characters in Dear Nora receive mail weeks apart creating lots of anxiety on both ends. Accounting for this delay in communication when writing the book was difficult. The complexity of keeping track of mail sent and received was mind-boggling. After several handwritten systems, I finally resorted to using a spreadsheet. Even that was a mental maze at times.

Were any of your characters real people?

The majority of the characters in the book, including Nora, Mother, and Louise, are products of my imagination.

These people were real: Colonel Rich, Captain Green, Miss McKay, Colonel McCann, Father Gilligan, Major Piekarski, Red Cross volunteer Marian, Major Scott, Major Wyman, Colonel Wilkes, Captain Turner, and General Albert C. Smith. Even Archie the dog was real as is the gravestone for Don, the dog. The hospitals where Nora served were real: Baxter General Hospital in Spokane, Washington; 82nd General Hospital at Iscoyd Park, Wales, United Kingdom; 162nd General Hospital at Nocton Hall, Nocton, England, United Kingdom; and Camp Lucky Strike, St. Valery-en-Caux, France.