From the two-time Newbery Honor-winner and a #1 New York Times bestselling author of The War That Saved My Life and The War I Finally Won, KIMBERLY BRUBAKER BRADLEY, comes a new novel that explores history, moral dilemmas and friendships.
We caught up with Kimberly to discuss the historical events that inspired her novel The Night War.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In 1942, much of France is occupied by the Nazis. Twelve-year-old Miri is Jewish, so she is not safe. Separated from her parents, she rescues her neighbours’ two-year-old daughter Nora and escapes to a village, where she is given a new name and pretends to be Catholic to escape Nazi capture. Miri is at first wary of the convent school nuns, but soon learns that there is much more than meets the eye to these knowledgeable women. One night she is asked to undertake a terrifying task that could allow her to escape. But what about Nora? The person Miri meets that night could save her life. And the person Miri becomes that night could save the lives of many more.
MEET KIMBERLY BRUBAKER BRADLEY
The Night War is based on historical events – what sparked the idea for this novel?
Two things – a trip to Chenonceau as a tourist, in 2017, where I learned that the castle had been used during WW2 to move people from the Occupied side of France to the safer Free French side, and a trip to Israel, in 2018, where, while I was touring the holocaust museum Yad Vashem, I learned about a group of people who were hiding Jewish students in French Catholic boarding schools.
The Night War is set in 1942 in France – what can you tell us about life for Jewish people living under Nazi occupation during this time?
Until July 16, 1942, it wasn’t much worse for Jewish people under the occupation than it was for people of other religions. Some able-bodied men were rounded up to work in German prison factories, and the authorities were more likely to take Jewish than non-Jewish men, but not a whole lot more likely. It was a scary time, and food was scarce, but that was true for everyone. There were a lot of lower-income Jewish immigrants living in the Pletzl, a neighbourhood that had been historically Jewish, but there were Jews of all classes living all over Paris. Everything changed on July 16, when what became known as the Vel d’Hiv roundup began – this time, French authorities, acting on German orders, captured over 13,000 entirely innocent Jewish people, most of them French citizens. The Germans shipped these people to concentration camps and very few survived. Among them were 4,115 children.
What did you find most surprising or shocking while researching your book?
There wasn’t much that surprised me because I’ve read a lot of this history in different forms before. The hardest part for me was creating the list of names in the back of the book – real students at the French public school in the Pletzl (which still operates today) who were captured in the roundup. Typing those names out made me very sad.
What can you tell us about your characters Miri and Nora and the challenges they will face?
At the beginning of the book, Miri’s frightened by all the bad things that have already happened to her and to people she loves. But gradually, at first because she has no choice, she starts taking action, and she finds it makes her feel better to know she’s fighting against wrong. Nora is only two. This is a pretty scary time for her, and she doesn’t understand it, but she loves Miri and knows Miri loves her.
What do you hope readers will take away from Miri’s journey?
I hope readers will take away two things: first, that what is allowed by law and what is morally right are sometimes different things, and second, that some of the issues we read about in history happen over and over again. It’s important to be aware so they don’t happen again.
What do you love about historical fiction? And why do you think it’s important?
The people from the past often lived is physical words we wouldn’t recognize – no internet, no computers, no cars, to name a few – but they still have the kind of hopes and relationships that we have now.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photography credit: Amy MacMurray
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley is the author of eighteen previous books, including Fighting Words and the Newbery Honor winners The War That Saved My Life and The War I Finally Won. The mother of two grown-up children, she lives with her husband on a fifty-two-acre horse farm in Tennessee, with three horses, two dogs and too many cats.
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