The Last Train from Paris by Juliet Greenwood (guest post)

 

I'm thrilled to invite Juliet Greenwood to my blog today. Juliet talks about the inspiration behind her historical novel, set in Paris during WWII. Scroll down to read the fascinating story of Juliet's Mum.

I'm adding this book to my must-read list. If I haven't had too many book blogging commitments this month, I would have loved to read this novel, especially that I've just stayed in Paris for several days.

The Last Train from Paris

 For Iris, each visit to her mother in St Mabon’s Cove, Cornwall has been the same – a serene escape from the city. But today, as she breathes in the salt air on the doorstep of her beloved childhood home, a heavy weight of anticipation settles over her. Iris knows she’s adopted, but any questions about where she came from have always been shut down by her parents, who can’t bear to revisit the past.

 Now, Iris can’t stop thinking about what she’s read on the official paperwork: BABY GIRL, FRANCE, 1939 – the year war was declared with Nazi Germany.

 When Iris confronts her mother, she hits the same wall of pain and resistance as whenever she mentions the war. That is, until her mother tearfully hands her an old tin of letters, tucked neatly beside a delicate piece of ivory wool.

 Retreating to the loft, Iris steels herself to at last learn the truth, however painful it might be. But, as she peels back each layer of history before her, a sensation of dread grows inside her. The past is calling, and its secrets are more intricate and tangled than Iris could ever have imagined.

 The year is 1939, and in Paris, France a young woman is about to commit a terrible betrayal… 

 A beautifully written and addictively compelling historical novel about the terrible choices ordinary people were forced to make in the horrors of World War Two. If you loved The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Alice Network and The Nightingale, you will devour this book.

 

What readers are saying about Juliet Greenwood:

“This was fantastic! Perfect for a Kate Morton or Lucinda Riley hangover, this book will draw you in and won't let go until you've read the last page. This book was unputdownable – fascinating characters, excellent writing, and a plot that keeps you turning the pages. I loved every second of it." Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“I found myself reading chapter after chapter, unable to put it down. A first-time read by this author but certainly not the last.” Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“For readers of Kate Morton and Lucinda Riley, this book will be one of your favorites… A historical novel that will keep you reading until the end.” Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“An absolutely brilliant read. I could not put it down…I loved how the war changed everyone and it was a gripping story... I really loved it. Cannot recommend it enough.” Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Did everything that I was looking for… it left me wanting to read more from Juliet Greenwood.” Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

Purchase Link - https://geni.us/290-al-aut-am

 

Author Bio –

Juliet Greenwood is a historical novelist, now published by Storm Publishing. Her first novel was a finalist for The People’s Book Prize and two of her books reached the top 5 in the UK Kindle store. Juliet has always been a bookworm and a storyteller, writing her first novel (a sweeping historical epic) at the age of ten. She lives in a traditional cottage in Snowdonia, North Wales, set between the mountains and the sea, with an overgrown garden (good for insects!) and a surprisingly successful grapevine.

 

Social Media Links –

Storm:                   https://stormpublishing.co/

 Website:              http://www.julietgreenwood.co.uk/

Facebook:            https://www.facebook.com/juliet.greenwood

Twitter: https://twitter.com/julietgreenwood

Instagram:           https://www.instagram.com/julietgreenwood/

Guest Post by

Juliet Greenwood

 

My inspiration for The Last Train from Paris

 

The inspiration for The Last Train from Paris originated in so many memories of my childhood in the 1960s and 70s. Most were impressions of my parents’ generation, the sense of something underlying their ordinary, everyday lives that I didn’t understand, and, to be honest, wasn’t particularly interested. My world was the future, with the optimism and sense of increasing prosperity of those years. It was when my parents acquired a fridge to replace the pantry, a washing machine superseded the twin tub and the mangle on the draining board, and we eventually had a TV – black and white, of course - although some of the neighbours had the wonder of colour. The NHS was still a miracle. The Second World War was twenty years ago, which is lost in the mists of time when you are ten.

            It was only years later that I began to understand (some of it only recently), that what lay underneath the adults’ lives was a memory of fear and a sense that life really could change in an instant and nothing was certain. It’s something we haven’t really experienced since, at least not until Covid hit. All through that surreal and frightening time of the pandemic, when everything was turned upside down and our lives were suddenly controlled by rules and constrictions we followed to help us all survive, those memories of my childhood surfaced.

I remembered how conversations between the adults had always seemed to stray back to the war, to my dad seeing the barrage balloons going up over London, my mum making her way through bombed out Birmingham to study, and standing in the garden watching the glow that lit up the night as Coventry burned. Then there were my teachers who were refugees, who had lived through the nightmare of Europe descending into total war, who had survived the firestorm that engulfed Hamburg, and the inhuman nightmare of concentration camps.

            The films of my childhood about the war mostly followed the heroics of battles, retelling the major conflicts on land and sea and in the air. My mum always refused to watch them. At the time, that all fitted in with women being viewed as weak, and rather silly, confined mostly to the domestic sphere, with very little public appearance at all. It was taking my permitted walks during Covid through almost deserted streets and countryside, hungry to meet other dogwalkers to have some human contact, that I remembered most vividly the stories Mum told me of having been a 17 year old studying near Paris on the day war broke out and having to make her way back to Calais by train, to catch the last civilian ferry back to Dover, which was stalked by a German submarine in the middle of the Channel.

            It was then that it struck me that she had seen a side of war that, until recently, hasn’t often been portrayed. The experiences of the civilians, not as victims, but survivors. And in particular the women who kept lives together under the most horrendous of circumstances, responsible for feeding families, keeping them safe, keeping some kind of sanity and humanity, and surviving to build a future after it was over. That was what my mum had seen as a teenager, as she watched families saying goodbye on the stations as her train made its way from Paris, families remembering a previous conflict and knowing they were facing the horrors of occupation and total war. It was also the terror of imminent extinction she experienced as she sat in the silent ferry as the submarine sought for any sound that might betray its presence.

            It was thinking over those memories, and especially after we had found my parents’ letters to each other while Mum was in France, and the note she sent when she finally landed in Dover, that made me passionately want to tell the stories of the civilians making their choices as best they could, and surviving by working together and sharing their humanity as the unthinkable overtook their lives.

Above all, I wanted it to be a story of the strength and resilience of so-called ‘ordinary’ people, and the extraordinary way we pull together in times of crisis, whatever we are facing, be it war, a pandemic, or the many difficulties and tragedies of family life. I suppose, in the end, it’s about the power of love, and the way it pulls us through, whatever happens, and in hope of building a better future.