Hope's War Author

on CompuServe Writers Forum

What gave you the inspiration to write Hope's War?

In the 1980s, I began to follow newspaper articles about people being accused of Nazi war crimes. One that stuck out in my mind was John Demjanjuk, who was extradited to Israel as

"Ivan the Terrible" and sentenced to death. He stayed on death row for 10 years, and then was set free, because the evidence that was used against him was false.That story got me thinking.

Do you have Ukrainian ancestry? Did any fight against the Nazis?

My ancestry is very much a mixed bag, but my paternal grandfather was Ukrainian. He came to Canada in 1912, but his mother and sister stayed in Ukraine. His sister (my great aunt) is the inspiration for Kataryna, the girl in the past portion who fought the Nazis. My great aunt was killed by the Nazis and is buried in a mass grave.

Did your Great-Aunt fight in the Resistance like Katarina? Have you ever thought of writing a book telling Katarina's story? I would liked to have read more about her, too.

Yes she did. However, I don't know very much about her. At the time of her death, my grandfather couldn't get mail because it was censored by the Soviet Union. He did find out from other people who immigrated that she was in the resistance, and that she is buried in a mass grave with approximately 100,000 others. Her mother (my great-grandmother) was exiled to Siberia by the communists, where she died.

Have you ever though of writing a book telling Katarina's story?

Do you think I should? I have considered writing a book about Nadiya as a slave labourer, and how she meets Danylo in the displace persons camp. I hadn't considered writing more on Kataryna, but perhaps I shall.

I have a question for you, Jen -- did you notice the photographs and the letters at the front and the back of the novel? Why do you think I put them in there? Any thoughts on what they are?

I think the picture and graphics in the front and the back was a letter. Maybe from your great-aunt? Or in the book, maybe from Katarina or Nadiya? Is the picture of your great aunt?

I liked the character of Katarina and I would like to read more of you writing about her.

She must have been very brave. I'd also like to read about Nadiya and Danylo meeting! 

The handwriting in the front and in the back of the book are letters that I received from a woman who is currently living in Ukraine. She's about 78 years old now, but she was in the resistance, just like Kataryna. In the letter, she talks about her husband being killed by the Gestapo, and how her baby was taken away from her. In her letter she also pleads with me to get the story of the Ukrainian resistance fighters told. The way she found me was by hearing an interview on Voice of America. She sent her letter to the radio station and they forwarded it to me.

The photograph in the front of the book is a girl who was a Red Cross nurse for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Her hospital was literally underground --ie -- under the ground in the woods. In the photo, she is 17. 

The photograph in the back is a woman who was a courier just like Danylo's mother. She would hide guns and medicine that she stole from the Nazis and she would take those items to the resistance fighters in the woods. Her 9 year old daughter was also a courier.

I don't have any photographs of my great aunt.

Yes, so you see you should write Kataryna's story! 

Could you read the letter? Do you speak that language? Her handwriting looked a little different than I am used to, too. That is neat that she heard you and was able to get a letter to you.

The letter is written in Ukrainian, and it uses a different set of letters than English. I can read Ukrainian when it is typed (not fluently), but I have alot of problems trying to read handwritten Ukrainian. I got that letter translated so I would know for sure what it said.

How did they build those hospitals and bunkers and things? How did they keep the Nazis or the Russians from knowing they what they were doing?

By being sneaky. Both the Nazis and the Communists thought that Ukrainians were really stupid, and so they didn't think they'd be able to rebel like this. In the province of Volyn (where Danylo lived) the resistance fighters fought off the Nazis for almost a full year. When the war ended, the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) were still fighting the Communists. They fought from hidden bunkers for almost 10 years after the war.

The way they hid the bunkers and hospitals was to build them deep in the woods (the Nazis and the Communists were not from Ukraine, so they weren't familiar with the woods. The Ukrainians knew the woods like the back of their hand). They would camoflauge them with leaves and shrubbery. They also had to make sure not to let smoke from underground fires show, and they had to hide the air holes. The Nazis and Communists would go through the woods, looking for signs of an underground bunker. When they found one, they would put a grenade down the air hole. Sometimes they would pour water in. They killed many resistance fighters this way.

Wow. Her 9 year old daughter was even younger than me. (Only by one year, though.) This is all so interesting.

Children made very good resistance fighters. 

Wow. I'm not sure I'd make a very good resistance fighter. I like being outside, but I'm not crazy about it and I'm not sure I'd like to hide weapons in my skirt or basket. But if I had to do it to protect my family and friends, I guess I would.

I know you'd make a good resistance fighter if you had to be one. Thank goodness we don't have to make these choices.

Marsha, I'm poking my head in while Jenna is at school. She'll rush to the computer as soon as she's home, I'm sure. You said, "The only thing I still do art-wise is Ukrainian Easter eggs."

I had wondered, as you had Kat teaching the how-to's. I found that part fascinating, too, and so appropriate that she had smashed her egg when she felt hopeless and then began a mosaic with the pieces at the end, building new hope out of the shattered. Although it has nothing to do with the book or writing, I was curious about the innards of the egg.

I thought if you left the egg sitting it would rot and begin to stink (or is that only if it's broken?) At one point Kat says that the insides dry by themselves and at another she says if she didn't hollow the egg it would rot and ruin the egg. Did I read that wrong?

And that the innards were significant? After you complete the egg, do you hollow it out?

Thanks again for answering the questions, Marsha. We'll be back to you this afternoon when Jenna gets home. Lynda

Hi Lynda,

Hopefully Marsha will jump in to correct me on this, but when I was growing up (in Alberta), we often made Ukrainian Easter Eggs (what we called them, though probably a misnomer). Anyway, all my Ukrainian friends let the egg yolk dry up inside the egg. The eggs were treated very carefully, and we would pick up very old eggs and shake them. The dried up yolk acted like a tiny pebbly rattle inside the egg. That's how we knew they were genuine. Real Ukrainian eggs were never blown out. (kc, without a drop of Ukrainian blood, but lots of interest in making the eggs!) 

Hi Lynda,

Karen gave you some good answers re the eggs. (and what a great question, I must say!)

Some eggs do rot, and some don't. It's a risk you take when you make one, and it's also what makes them so precious. The trick is in how you store them when they're freshly made. If you put them somewhere where there's no air circulation (ie -- in a china cabinet) they may rot, but if you put them in an open bowl where there's no direct sunlight, they should dry out. However, every once in awhile you can do all the right things, and they'll still rot.

I remember one very stinky day when a very old egg we had exploded. In the house. Let me tell you, years-old rotten egg innards have alot of velocity. The only sure way to save an egg is to take out the insides. This is what I do, but purists are horrified at the practice. A pysanka is a deeply symbolic object in Ukrainian culture. FWIW -- I use a syringe given to me by my sister's chemo nurse.

Is there anything you can do to preserve or strengthen the shell so that it is less likely to break?

You don't want it any stronger, because then if it breaks, it'll be stinkier inside. The drying happens best when there are tiny hairline cracks in the eggs -- the strength comes from its fragility, if you will. However, I do cheat and take out the innards. I use a single hole.

I was fascinated as Kat was talking about the exhibit of eggs she had seen that some of them were so old. I'd love to see such an exhibit. Heck, I'd love to see your drawerful!

Pysanky have been made in Ukraine for more than 2000 years. They've excavated decorated egg shells from way way back. If you have a Ukrainian church or hall or seniors' home anywhere near you, call and see if they have a pysanky display. At the seniors' home in Mississauga Ontario, they have an incredible display: hundreds of eggs, some at least a century old. And this isn't even a travelling exhibit.

How fascinating. Do you make many eggs and do you do them at a specific time of year?

Here are some pysanky links:

http://www2.uwindsor.ca/~hlynka/pysanka.html

I do make eggs. Usually about two dozen each spring, although I didn't make any this last spring because I was so busy writing Hope's War! Once I get started on them, I get hooked and just keep making more and more. I have done them on goose eggs, and tiny little eggs too.

I wonder if the US government has these kinds of deportation problems, too.

Yes, the same thing is happening in the US.

I think it was very unfair that Danylo was punished for something he did not do.

Also that he's treated like a criminal when he's actually a hero.But there are a couple of parallel stories too. What did you think about Kat automatically thinking that Michael had done the graffiti?

I didn't think that Kat thought Michael did it. She didn't defend him when the police took him and I knew it wasn't him. 

But she wasn't very emphatic in a defense for him, was she? What I wanted to show in this is how easy it is to misunderstand and/or jump to conclusions.

But after Dylan scalped Ian, I KNEW it was him!

Good for you! You're one of the few who guessed it ahead of time.

I don't think that a wonderful hero should be doubted. I wonder how many other people got blamed for things when they were actually doing the opposite. 

It is okay to accuse if the person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The problem with what happened to Danylo is that he is getting deported without ever being given a criminal trial. I think that the government definitely should be looking for the people who did the crimes, but they have to make sure they've got the right people.

They should hire new judges.

The judges can only work within the way the law is written. It's the politicians, not the judges. In fact, the judges have gone out of their way to point out that none of these people have committed crimes, and in fact, that these people are victims. 

The judges are not being allowed to look at guilt or innocence, just whether a person may have lied during their immigration interview. The problem is that they don't even have to prove that someone lied: only that they may have. And the lie can be about anything. Basically, anyone who is an immigrant could have this legislation used against them.

kc here. I really enjoyed this novel. I especially loved the seamless weaving of the past and present stories.

I am delighted that you enjoyed the novel. Once I got going on the writing of it, I found Hope's War much easier to write than The Hunger. However, that "seamless weaving" didn't happen until the very end, when my editor suggested it. Before that, the stories were sort of back to back, like in The Hunger. It was a massive rewrite, but Barry was dead-on in his suggestion.

The cover photos and letters make the book all the more haunting.

I think so too. There were actually supposed to be a whole lot more photos. One per chapter. But then I went and wrote an extra 20,000 words, so there was no room. <g>

Running off at the pen again, were you?

Always. Whatever the limit, I seem to go 50% over.

<grin> I'll remember that when you are advising me to cut back on my dialogue by 66.6%!

Why do you think I'm so good at suggesting cuts to others? It is my perennial goal for my own writing! 

How long did it take you to research and write this book?

I have been reading newspaper articles about Nazi war crimes trials for about 15 years, and so I suppose that's when passive research started. I didn't do any serious research until the summer of 1999. For about 18 months, I interviewed families of men accused, sat in on hearings, read court transcripts. At the same time, I immersed myself in books about Ukraine and WWII. I also looked at copies of correspondence between various Nazi officials about "the Ukrainian question". I don't read German, so I used translations. To make sure I understood what I was reading, I accessed two separate translations of the same documents, and then had an independent translator go over the same stuff too. I also looked at hundreds of photographs from WWII Soviet archives.

One of the very best sources of information was a 30-plus volume set of Litopys UPA (Chronicles of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army). The editor of this series is a professor of history at MacMaster University, which is just 20 minutes away from my house. The series is in Ukrainian, but the summaries are in English. This professor was in the UPA as a 13 year old, and so in addition to being an eye-witness, he also has spent his life gathering together original documents of the era, and also compiling interviews. This professor was one of several who read over my whole manuscript for accuracy.

Are the cases mentioned at the back of the book in Author s Notes still pending?

All of the cases mentioned are still in limbo.

Have you ever gathered or eaten pidpenky?

Eaten lots of times! They're awesome!! I have never picked them, or dried them, or any of that stuff in the book. It was all research.

Wow, Marsha! Do you always spend as much time researching for each book?

I do spend a fair bit of time researching each book, but that's partly because I keep on writing novels about different times and places. Now that I've done my big research on specific times in history (WWII in Eastern Europe, Turkish Armenia in WWI) I will be able to write other novels without having to start from scratch with the research.

Did you write bits of the story at the same time as you were gathering information, or did you write it all the same time?

I do a whole pile of research before I start writing the story, then once I have overdosed on research, I start to write until I write myself into a corner and need to research some more.

Also, there are different kinds of research. In Hope's War, aside from the historical research, I also had to find out about Cawthra school for the arts, pidpenky picking, Goth kids, and so on. I went to an army surplus store just like the one in the novel, and the clerk who served me was just like that. All those scenes each have to be researched.

How much time do you think you spent actually writing the book?

Probably 6 months of intensive writing (14 hour days, 4 or 5 days a week).

Was the whole thing clear to you when you began?

Not at all. I didn't know that Lisa, or Michael, or Ian were going to be such important characters. I didn't know that Dylan was going to do what he did. And I didn't know whether Danylo was guilty or not.

I liked how all the characters related to each other.

Oh, thank you! I got really attached to them myself.

The stories behind your story are fascinating. I think it's wonderful that that woman wrote to you from Ukraine. Makes me a little sad though to think of all the suffering and destruction that that war brought - that all wars bring. Hope's War is a great book. Natalia

I learned so much while researching Hope's War. And what was really heart-wrenching was the way that some people opened up to me and spilled out stories they'd had bottled up for decades. Did you know that there are a number of former Ostarbeiters in Canada who refused to sign up for the compensation fund for Nazi slave labourers because they figured if they did, the Canadian government would strip them of their citizenship as "collaborators". You can't really blame them for that mindset either, given what's happened to others.

When Ian bought the knife at the Army surplus store, did you know he would get "scalped" with it later in the story, or did it come to you while you were writing?

I had no idea that was going to happen. When I went to the Army surplus store as research for that scene, there was a knife like that under the glass counter at the checkout. My nephew Ian was my model for Ian in the novel (my nephew is into Goth culture and is a gifted musician) so when I got home, I called him up and asked him what he would do if he saw a knife like that and he had enough money to buy it. My real Ian is a very gentle creature, so I was surprised when he told me that he would buy it because it sounded like it was really beautiful. "But it's a weapon," I said to him. To which he responded, "but it sounds awesome." So, I hadn't planned on my character even having the knife, but once he had it, those thugs managed to find it.

FWIW -- my Ian was beaten up by thugs much like in the novel. He wasn't scalped, but his good friend, also a Goth, was beaten up so badly that he dropped out of school and wouldn't leave the house for over a month. 

I finally got my _own_ copy of Hope's War (I gave two away as gifts).

It's terrific, just as I thought it would be... <g>

Horrifying, though. You struck a fine balance between Kat's and Danylo's stories; it emphasizes the injustice. And I loved the last paragraph. <s> In fact, I loved the whole metaphor/symbolism of the pysanka.

That's the kind of thing I wish I could create. Which brings me to a question: Did you know you would do that when you first started Kat on her psysanki creation? Or did it evolve? It makes the book much richer. 

It's great that it isn't self-conscious and doesn't hit the reader over the head. I didn't even recognize how appropriate it was until the last paragraph. Well done.

I'm sending a copy to the AP history teacher at the high school my kids went to. He's always looking for ways to make history relevant.

But I'm not sending him _my_ copy! Liz

Liz, I'd had an itch and an urge to destroy that pysanka in the novel for a long time, but I didn't know why and I didn't know what Kat would then do. I woke up one morning and the whole thing became clear to me. The scene was set in my head.

Is there any kind of a fund to help families who have been targeted with these accusations?

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress will channel donations to families within their community who are affected by this, but it's a drop in the bucket. One family I interviewed is in debt to the tune of half a million. And the judge in that case too, said that the man was a victim of the Nazis, but the way the law has been written, the judge's hands are tied. That's why I wrote the ending the way that I did. That's reality.

Don't tell anybody, but I'm not the quickest pup in the pack. I started out the WIP with characters and images only, and conflict emerged from those after much writing and thinking and imagining and researching.

You sound pretty quick to me. That's exactly how I do it too. I never know what I'm going to write, but an image will stick in my brain, and if I don't write a scene about it, I can't get any sleep. So I write it, and that leads to research, which leads to another image. And so on.

I have learned the hard way that you have to loosen up and let the story come to you. If you try to force it, or if you write it too soon, you'll spoil it. Also, if you write it too soon, you'll be forced to get into the neverending polishing/rewrite cycle, and then you'll polish off all the good stuff. Just have confidence in your voice and let your images lead you. It sounds like this is exactly what you're doing.