I’ve always been a memoirist, and of course read and enjoy—and teach memoir writing, but all my life I’ve devoured fiction. Though I imagined one day I’d write a novel, I had no idea about how that might happen==until a topic grabbed me and wouldn’t let go! I began with what “really” happened, and read all I could, not thinking seriously of writing yet.

I came upon a book about Varian Fry, an American who saved refugees from Austria and Germany who were trapped in France when it lost the war in six weeks in June, 1940. Germany occupied half of France while the other half was controlled by a collaborationist government in Vichy under Philippe Petain. Now Hitler was coming after them again. I worried about what was happening to people in Vichy France and immersed myself in research, piling hundreds of books in my living room!

A group called the Emergency Rescue Committee in New York sent Fry to Marseille, with a list in his pocket of intellectuals, artists, and politicians in danger of arrest. Fry was to help them get the proper papers and escape France. When he arrived, he discovered that many thousands of refugees were in danger of arrest, especially Jews, and he was unable to turn his back on them. But the Americans were not helpful.