HANSON – Canadian novelist Guy Vanderhaeghe once wrote that “History tells us what people do; historical fiction helps us imagine how they felt.”
Perhaps that best explains not only how the books of Martha Hall Kelly affect her readers, but how she came to write them in the first place.
The author of the New York Times bestselling novel “The Lilac Girls,” about Polish victims of Nazi medical “research” in Ravensbrück concentration camp.
She revisited her World War II setting – and Hanson on Thursday, Sept. 21 to talk about her new novel “The Golden Doves” at Camp Kiwanee’s Needles Lodge.
Introduced by Library Trustee, and Kelly fan, Dianna McDevitt, the author spoke of her first novel “The Lilac Girls,” and how it led to her latest – “The Golden Doves,” which tells the tale of two former Resistance workers who discover that Nazis are being helped to escape Europe after the war through Rome, and with the help of the U.S. government.
“It’s no secret that I love historical fiction, and one of my favorite authors happens to be here tonight,” McDevitt said, “We are so delighted to welcome Martha Hall Kelly again to chat with us Hanson Library patrons about her latest book, ‘The Golden Doves,’ as well as her previous books.”
She hugged Kelly as the audience welcomed her with applause. But Kelly is no stranger to Hanson, besides having visited last year to discuss her books, she spent a good deal of her childhood in Hanson after her family had moved to Mattakeesett Street, in the Bryantville section of town, when she was a very young girl.
“You may have read one of her previous books – I’ve got them all, I’m a fan,” McDevitt said, noting that “The Lilac Girls” has sold two million copies on the New York Times Bestseller list. “That’s truly a feat for a first novel.”
McDevitt said she loved how Kelly’s books not only explore the “untold stories of World War II,” but also have expanded to other periods in history.
“The Lilac Girls’” sister novels “The Lost Roses” set in Imperialist Russia and “The Sunflower Girls,” about Civil War nurses also carried on the floral theme, while the new book covers different themes.
“I have to tell you how wonderful it is to be here, and how emotional,” Kelly said on her homecoming of a sort. “I didn’t think it would be that way.”
She reviewed the process she followed in writing “The Lilac Girls” for new readers of her books.
Following her mother’s death, her husband suggested she visit the Bellamy-Ferriday House & Garden in Bethlehem, Conn., known for its lilac garden, which Kelly had always wanted to visit, as a way to deal with her grief. Kelly’s mother had loved lilacs, and it seemed a natural diversion.
That visit turned out to be the launchpad for her career, inspiring her first book after she spied a photo of “the rabbits,” as the Ravensbrück victims of Nazi medical experiments were known.
The surviving girls, who had been Polish Girl Scouts before the war, were brought to the Bethlehem farm by its owner at the time, New York socialite Caroline Ferriday to help them recover from their ordeal. When Kelly discovered that photo, she had found the inspiration for researching a non-fiction book that later became her first novel.
Fast-forward to a book tour stop in Florida for “The Lilac Girls,” where and she met a Hungarian Jewish woman, who told her about an encounter with the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz.
“That really changed me,” Kelly said, deciding that after the remaining books she was under contract to write for the “flower” series, would be a book on how the Nazis escaped Europe after the war.
“There were three ways the Nazis escaped,” she discovered from her early research for “The Golden Doves.” They were either released from prison by the U.S. government during the Cold War, the space program’s need for German scientists or a route through Italy and the Vatican.
“I wanted to feature all of that in my book,” she said. Her heroines were “Josie,” a fictionalized version of American WWII spy Virginia Hall, and “Arlette,” a German-French Resistance member who both ended up in Ravensbrück, like “the rabbits.” Her heroines hunt down the Ravensbrück version of Mengele after the war.
To research the book, she took her husband on a post-COVID tour of Italy and the Vatican, tracing the route the Nazis would have taken in their escape from Europe. At one point, they “blended” with a group of German families visiting a secluded cemetery where their wartime Nazi family members were interred along with clergy that aided them to sniff out information.
“If anyone ever says to you, ‘Why don’t you go see that house you always wanted to go see, or that museum, or that whatever,’ go,” Kelly said. “You never know. It might be worth it.”
Audience questions included the order in which she wrote the books, which she said were in “backward chronology” because her husband told her, after “The Lilac Girls,” that she had a moment of leverage to decide how she would write, but she had already done research on “Roses” and “Sunflowers.”
She said that, despite her exhaustive research for her novels, she said it was unlikely.
“You know, once you get used to making stuff up …” she joked. “If I know it’s true, I use that, but I really want to be able to take liberties.”
As for her next book, she said it will be another visit to WWII historical fiction, set on Martha’s Vineyard where GIs were rehearsed the D-Day invasion.
“I just today hit the send button to send it to my editor,” she said.