Since its publication in 2016, Martha Hall Kelly’s debut novel, Lilac Girls, has become a bestselling novel and a book club favorite. This remarkable book introduced the world to the real-life heroine Caroline Ferriday, and educated many about Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women.

Random House Reader’s Circle asked Lynn Cullen, bestselling author of Twain’s End and Mrs. Poe, to pose some questions to Martha, author to author.

 
© Jeffrey Mosier Photography                                                                                          

 Lynn Cullen: The story of the prisoners at Ravensbrück, the only all-female concentration camp in Nazi Germany, is one that begged to be told with the insight into human behavior that only a novel can provide. Yet, more than seventy years passed before you brought this important episode in history to light in your novel, Lilac Girls. I strongly believe that important stories like this choose their tellers, not the other way around. Why do you think this story chose you?

  Martha Hall Kelly: I do feel like something inhabited me the day I stepped into the lovely Bellamy-Ferriday House. Caroline? The Rabbits? Whoever they were, they led me on an incredible journey, through Poland, Germany and France to find the truth about this story. Perhaps all of those brave women, almost seventy years after World War II, wanted their story told.

LC: Is there one particular bit of research that drove you to write this book? Did the same trigger sustain you as you made your journey of discovery through what must have been painful territory?

MHK: I found two manuscripts in Caroline’s archives, memoirs written by two of the so-called Rabbits. Caroline had paper-clipped the rejection letters from publishers to the manuscripts, as well as her apologetic notes to the women, telling them she had submitted their work to publishers and there was no interest in their stories. Seeing those rejections spurred me to write Lilac Girls and kept me going when I would hit a bumpy spot. It was great motivation knowing Caroline and the Rabbits wanted the world to know their story so badly.

LC: The incomprehensibly inhumane behaviors carried out in Ravensbrück represent the darkest side of the human animal. I applaud you for giving your readers an unsparing look at these atrocities but yet I’m also grateful that you juxtaposed the darkness with characters who appealed to what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature. ”Was it difficult to switch back and forth during the writing?

MHK: Writing in first person, it’s so easy to get immersed in the characters, good and bad. So, yes, it was a wonderful relief, after living with some of the terrible things that happened in the camp, to switch back to write about Caroline’s life in New York City. Not hard, really, because I loved writing every bit of it, even the most heinous scenes, but definitely an emotional relief sometimes.

LC: Has the writing of Lilac Girls changed your life?

MHK: Lilac Girls was my first novel and introduced me to the world of writing. Now, having something I can’t wait to do when I get up each morning has transformed my life in every way imaginable. It made me more confident about everything, more curious about the world and just a million times happier. Also, I’m a shy person but wanted to be able to speak out and stand up for things I believed in. Now, after spending so much time researching Caroline, who always did the right thing, I find myself looking for people to help and wrongs to right. It seems corny to the usually cynical me, reading this over, but it’s true. Many readers write and tell me they have experienced that same urge to incite positive change after reading Lilac Girls and it makes me incredibly happy.
 

Many readers will be thrilled to learn that Martha Hall Kelly’s new novel is on the way. Lost Roses (coming April 2019), set a generation earlier and also inspired by true events, features Caroline’s mother, Eliza, and follows three equally indomitable women from St. Petersburg to Paris under the shadow
of World War I.

To start reading Lost Roses now, request an eGalley on NetGalley or Edelweiss.
 

For additional book club resources for Lilac Girls, including videos, maps, menu ideas, and discussion questions, visit Martha Hall Kelly’s site.


 

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