Interview with Jina Bacarr - Author of Sisters at War
Interview with Jina Bacarr - Author of Sisters at War
Novel release date: September 25th, 2023
Publisher: Boldwood Books
My review is found here.
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INTERVIEW
Please share what your World War II story is all about?
Sisters At War tells the story of the Beaufort Sisters in Occupied Paris. Eve and Justine live in the magnificent home of Jewish philanthropists Monsieur and Madame de Giocomte where their maman is a seamstress. They’re surrounded by art masterpieces and were painted by a famous artist when they were fourteen and sixteen. The painting became known as ‘The Daisy Sisters’; then in August 1940, the SS storms their home and steals the painting.
And one of the sisters.
Leaving the other sister behind, not knowing what happened to her sibling.
The story continues with how each sister copes with the aftermath, how the sexual assault affects the sisters’ relationship with each other, their part in the war… and how both sisters deal with family and the men in their lives.
In the notes at the back, you state that this was the hardest book you have ever written. Can you please explain the reason for this comment?
I had several experiences that formed me as a young woman… unfortunately, some were sexual encounters that haunted me for years and, like so many women of my generation, I remained silent. Kept my secrets.
Until now.
Even when we don’t want them to, those secrets sneak into your stories. Subtle at first, like a moment in your heroine’s life that mirrors something awful you lived through. You shiver, reading the words, asking yourself, How’d that get in there? Oh-oh, it’s flashback time. I’m not going there again… am I?
You dismiss it at first, then you fixate on those moments. They fester, begging for attention. Like the scar covering an old wound, it’s always there to remind you.
That’s what happened to me when I was working on Sisters At War. My two worlds collided head-on—my writing world with my past. The result is a no holds barred story about the emotional, mental, and physical aftermath of sexual assault using my own experiences as a guide.
What is the main theme of Sisters of War?
Survival… in a world gone mad, each sister strives to do her part to save France from the Nazis in her unique way, even if it means one of the sisters must pose as a Nazi collaborator. With support from the brave men in their lives, my heroines battle the storm and don’t give up the fight to oust the occupiers from their homeland.
This is a story about two sisters caught in the horrors of war with the Nazis. Please describe each sister, their characteristics and roles in this novel.
Justine – twenty
Doll-like face with curling lashes, she has porcelain skin and wavy blonde hair like a Jumeau doll, blue eyes, and curvy figure but slender; everyone falls under her spell. She’s a marvel with people, empathizing with them and they trust her with their secrets. She’s a hat and dress designer, a painting come to life who lives in her own special world of silk and chiffon, lace and satin.
Justine is elegant and artistic and uses her talents to fight the Nazis.
Ève – eighteen
She considers herself an ugly duckling without a pond to swim in. Big feet, taller than most girls her age, she has long, dark blonde hair she winds around her head, angular cheekbones like a model, big eyes, but she doesn’t wear makeup. She’s a science student at the Sorbonne and has her test tubes and experiments to occupy her mind and wants to help people by finding cures for disease.
Eve is a rebel, smart and unconventional in her fight against the Nazis.
Which antagonist was the hardest to create and why?
Herr Avicus Geller – the Gestapo man appears in all four of my Paris novels. He’s cold, calculating; upholding the law to him is like the crossword puzzles that torment his mind begging for completion. He can take different paths to solve the puzzle, but the end result is predetermined. You can’t change the words or spelling, just the order you work the puzzle. Following the law is like that to him. No deviation from the rules.
Then he meets a Beaufort Sister and she challenges those rules… and him.
He was the hardest to create because his character plays on the stereotype of the Gestapo man we’re all familiar with. I wanted to take that further and show how his mind works by adding his obsession with crossword puzzles and how one of the Beaufort sisters gets under his skin and jolts his world.
There are some very emotional scenes in the novel. Which one was the most difficult to write and how did you approach it?
The sexual assault on one of the Beaufort Sisters.
It happens in the beginning of the novel and the challenge was to allow the reader to get into the heads of the two sisters quickly, who they are, the Paris setting, their everyday world… and how it’s turned upside down in one afternoon when an SS major storms into the home they live in, looting art and kidnapping a sister as spoils of war.
I couldn’t ignore the physical attack, gloss over it, but I didn’t want to make it graphic in such a way the reader would stop reading. Instead, I focused on the emotional and mental journey the sister experiences, the guilt, the shame, the questions that flood her mind (Why me? What happens to me now?) Like a setting sun blazing hot before disappearing into the horizon… you feel the burn, the heat… then the cold darkness descends.
And it’s over.
And somehow you fight through the night to greet the dawn…
Sisters At War is raw in places, gut-wrenching, emotional, but in the end it’s a story about survival… love, courage, and redemption.
Being a historical fiction novel, it would require much research. What was your best resource and provide at least one fact you learned that helped with telling your story?
Writing about Occupied France is daunting… life changed under the Nazis considerably while Parisians struggled to survive and the German occupiers insisted ‘Everything was lovely in the City of Light’. Because I focus on real events (the Jewish roundups and deportation, the student revolt, the Resistance), I’d say having the Internet at my constant disposal to check the tiniest of facts quickly and accurately was vital.
The fact that blew me away and inspired the theme of Sisters At War was what I read about that happened after the war. When I was researching WW2, I came across the horrible sexual violence the Nazis did to women prisoners (I didn’t use most of it – it would turn readers off), but then I discovered something that infuriated me. At the Nuremberg Trials, they kept out rape victims’ testimony because, and I quote, they didn’t ‘want a bunch of crying women in the courtroom’. I still can’t believe it.
You focus on the art world of Paris during World War II. Would you like to share some of that information and how you use it in Sisters of War?
I’ve loved the Impressionists forever, collecting posters of their paintings – Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet, Renoir. I studied art history and visited major museums in Europe. Then I discovered that the subject of a painting by an Impressionist had a history with the Holocaust – and the amazing story of what happened to that little girl and her family – and the painting – during and after WW2.
That led me to jump into the art world of Paris during the war, how the Nazis looted art from Jewish collectors and how it was sold at the famous auction house Hôtel Drouot in Paris. How art dealers and patrons and investors went on a ‘buying spree’ when according to experts, two million art items including Impressionist paintings passed through the auction house from 1941-1942 (the Nazis drove up the prices, buying art for Hitler’s future art museum in Linz.)
So I created my own ‘painting by a renowned artist’ of the Beaufort Sisters and how it’s stolen by the SS, inciting the riff between the sisters; we follow the trail of what happens to the painting and then how it reunites them at a crucial point in the story.
What do you hope your readers will learn or take away from reading your novel?
It takes courage to face your demons… whatever they are. You can do it. Talk therapy works. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
What leisurely activities do you enjoy that help you unwind during a break from writing?
I chuckled when I read the question. I’ve been so mired in research and writing for the past several years, I’ve become a WW2 historian, soaking up those turbulent war years on every front. When I do have a free moment, I go to the beach and watch the waves roll in like I’ve been doing since I was that gangly kid in high school eager to learn how to surf. I sit on the rocks as the ocean spray tickles my bare feet and my mind, reminding me not to give up in times of duress, to keep going and like the powerful waves, I’ll eventually reach the shore.
If you could spend a day with one of your favourite authors, who would it be and what would you like to do? What three questions would you ask them?
Jack Finney.
I’d travel back in time with him (just kidding… but if you’ve read his classic novel Time and Again , you know what I mean). Seriously, we’d visit the Titanic exhibit in Los Angeles (we both wrote novels about the Titanic – mine is The Runaway Girl) and have lunch at a French café afterward and talk about writing.
Mr Finney made me believe in time travel. I’d ask him to talk more about his findings on the science behind traveling through time, the whys and what ifs. I’d also ask him for tips on doing research for historicals, and what book he would have written next if he hadn’t left us.
Are you working on a new novel and can you share a little about it?
Yes. I’m writing the sequel to Sisters At War.
We pick up where we left off in 1942 and turn the tables on the sisters in Book 2. Each sister is forced to change up her fight against the Nazis in a startling manner. I won’t tell you how, but we follow the Beaufort Sisters through new challenges and an escape that will have you on the edge of your seat, then a moment when life hangs by a thread for a major character … and oh, yes, the romance heats up, too!
Huge thanks to Jina for being my guest author today. I encourage everyone to pick up a copy of this incredible story from your favourite bookshop.
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