Before we begin, please introduce yourself.
I’m Mary Anna and I’m the author of The Traitor Beside Her, The Physicists’ Daughter, and thirteen Faye Longchamp mysteries. I also do academic research on the work of Agatha Christie. My novels have received recognition including the Oklahoma Book Award, the Will Rogers Medallion Award, and the Benjamin Franklin Award. My Christie scholarship has been nominated for an Edgar, an Agatha, and an HRF Keating Award. I teach fiction and nonfiction writing at the University of Oklahoma, where I get to introduce a new generation to the joys of writing. And I love to read!
Could you tell us a little about your new release, and what inspired you?
The Traitor Beside Her is my second WWII-era novel featuring Justine Byrne. Justine is the daughter of two physicists who brought her up to know and do things that most women in the 1940s didn’t. This means she didn’t quite fit in when she was in high school, but she grew up to be a woman who could look around the munitions factory where she has a Rosie-the-Riveter-style job and see that her work was being sabotaged, and that’s exactly what she did in her first book, The Physicists’ Daughter. In The Traitor Beside Her, the US government has realized how useful somebody like Justine could be as a spy, so she is working undercover with a group of code breakers in Washington, DC. The government knows that one of them is a traitor, and it’s Justine’s job to find out who it is before the spy can reveal secrets that could change the course of the Battle of the Bulge. The fate of the war could rest in her hands.
When researching this era, did you come upon any unexpected surprises in your research?
It was fascinating to read about women who had never expected to be anything but wives and mothers getting on trains and going across the country to do war work. In Washington, DC, particularly, they flooded into the city taking jobs that were critical to the success of the Allies, but the city wasn’t prepared. There was a major shortage of housing and, particularly, there was a shortage of housing that was considered “suitable” for single women. The government responded by building huge women-only dormitory complexes, so that’s where I put Georgette and Justine. I found an article in an architectural magazine about how the dormitories were designed to be comfortable, right down to the modern furniture, cheerful color scheme, and on-site cafeteria. It even had floor plans, which made it convenient when it came time for me to write dramatic chase scenes!
Why do you think this period in history still fascinates readers?
World War II fascinates us for so many reasons. The human toll of momentous historical events like the Holocaust and the attack on Pearl Harbor and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are impossible to grasp, but we feel compelled to try. World War II is within living memory, so there are still people here who can tell us, for example, what they thought when they first heard about the atomic bomb. They can also tell us about the more mundane everyday things like food rationing. The odds are good that if recipes have been handed down through your family for decades, some of them bear traces of the creativity of cooks who had to make do with what they could get. World War II has come to represent the battle between Good and Evil. We’ve been telling stories about that battle since we invented language.
What do you think is the most challenging aspect of writing Historical Fiction set in this era?
As I just said, the 1940s are within living memory. If you’re writing about medieval times, historians and long-time readers of medieval historical fiction and popular nonfiction will notice your mistakes. If you make a mistake when you’re writing about 1944, your grandmother and all her friends will be the ones taking you to task!
Does one of the main characters hold a special place in your heart? If so, why?
I obviously enjoy my main character, Justine, because I signed up to spend entire books in her head, but her best friend Georgette is the one who turned out to be a special joy. She is so alive and so enthusiastic. She’s so anxious to experience the world that she feels like she has missed by being born poor in a remote place. She wants to travel! She wants to learn algebra! (Well, she wants to learn theoretical physics, but Justine says she has to learn algebra first.) Georgette is only twenty-one and she’s taking on the wide world in big gulps. I’m looking forward to seeing where she goes and what she does next.
What is your current work in progress?
I’m working on a standalone Gothic novel called The Library of Rockfall House. It’s also set in the 1940s, but it’s not an espionage-based thriller. I pitched it as Rebecca-meets-Who’s-Afraid-of-Virginia-Woolf-meets-Dark-Academia. So far, I’m having a heckuva lotta fun writing it.
Thank you for your time, Mary Anna.
You’re welcome!
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