Inspired by the incredible true story of how the people of Denmark saved their Jewish neighbours during WW2
Helsingør, Denmark, 1943
In the midst of the German occupation during World War Two, Inger Bredahl joins the underground resistance and risks her life to save members of Denmark’s Jewish community and help them escape to Sweden.
Copenhagen, 2018
Inger’s granddaughter, Cecilie Lund, is mourning her death when a mysterious discovery while cleaning out Inger’s flat leads past and present to intersect. As long-held secrets finally see the light of day, Cecilie learns the story of her grandmother’s courage and bravery, and of the power of friendship, love, and standing for what’s right…even when you have everything to lose.
An inspiring tale of the resilience of the human spirit and the power of community.
My Review of The Helsingor Sewing Club
The Helsingor Sewing Club will stay with me for quite some time. The story is primarily about the courage and selflessness of a young Danish woman who risks life and limb to protect her Jewish countrymen from Nazi persecution.
The anguish of the characters at the mindless loss of life and the anger at the ruthlessness of the German soldiers is palpable.
The atmosphere of the book is mostly charged with tension, secrecy, and danger. Yet, it was a loss of a more personal kind that had a greater effect on me. The thought of what could have been made me as disappointed as the characters in the book.
Descriptions of how people had to make do with what they could get fascinated me. How they worked around the shortage of essentials and scraped and scrounged to save up for special occasions makes me think we’re blessed to live in a world of excess.
The rationale behind the unusual title of the book is revealed much later and only fleetingly. But it doesn’t matter. The story of how a community rallied around to help its members and stood up to wrongdoing, even if they did it clandestinely, is powerful and visceral.
This book is not for the faint-hearted. Themes of murder, suicide, separation, and persecution are explored in great depth. You should pick it up only if you’re prepared to read about it. I felt, by turns, shocked, inspired, and tearful at the dramatic events in the story.
If you’re not familiar with the culture of Denmark and the Danish language, you may find it a bit difficult to follow certain parts of the book. The author has beautifully integrated Danish and German words and phrases in the story to give it an authentic feel. It doesn’t interfere with your understanding of the overall storyline, but you may not get the details. But what’s Google for, right?
Author Bio – Originally from Denmark, I have lived in London for many years, surrounded by my family, cats, books and the Scandinavian hygge I try to create everywhere I go. As a linguist I love playing with words and language, and I am addicted to story-telling. I also believe strongly in social responsibility and sustainable living.
1942. Three years into the war, Pam turns down her hard-won place at Oxford University to become a codebreaker at Bletchley Park. There, she meets two young men, both keen to impress her, and Pam finds herself falling hard for one of them. But as the country’s future becomes more uncertain by the day, a tragic turn of events casts doubt on her choice – and Pam’s loyalty is pushed to its limits…
Present-day. Julia is struggling to juggle her career, two children and a husband increasingly jealous of her success. Her brother presents her with the perfect distraction: forgotten photos of their grandmother as a young woman at Bletchley Park. Why did her grandmother never speak of her time there? The search for answers leads Julia to an incredible tale of betrayal and bravery – one that inspires some huge decisions of her own…
My Review of The Girl From Bletchley Park
The Girl From Bletchley Park is a riveting story about the strength and achievements of two women in the face of danger and heartbreak. Two timelines – 1942 and the present – run in parallel to tell a story of determination, dedication, sacrifice, and hardships.
Julia, an entrepreneur juggling a jealous husband and two children, discovers her grandmother’s (Pam) role at Bletchley Park through some old photographs and a memoir written by Pam’s friend. As she pieces together the fascinating story of Pam’s contribution to WWII, she also fixes her increasingly off-kilter marriage in the process.
The author has researched her story well. The technical details of code-breaking machines used during WWII are fascinating yet simple to understand. The idea that women aren’t good at mathematics or STEM subjects or cannot have a successful career is blown to smithereens.
The men attempt to use the women to further their own goals but are surprised to find that they cannot be as easily manipulated as they thought.
I loved all aspects of this book – the intimate look inside the workings of Bletchley Park, the tug-of-war between people, and the triumph of love and loyalty over greed and deceit.
Kathleen McGurl lives near the coast in Christchurch, England. She writes dual timeline novels in which a historical mystery is uncovered and resolved in the present day. She is married to an Irishman and has two adult sons. She enjoys travelling, especially in her motorhome around Europe.
Thank you to the author and Rachel’s Random Resources for my spot on this blog tour!
My Thoughts
There are so many characters in this novel whose lives are running side by side.
(Hint: You should read the previous two books in the series first.)
I had to make some assumptions about each character’s background to understand what’s happening in the present. All the characters have one thing in common– they either work at Harpers Emporium or know someone who does.
An important theme–women’s rights–is discussed in this book, and how the men in the lives of the characters support the movement by varying degrees. Some of the men don’t want their womenfolk to have anything to do with “unladylike” events, whereas others are forward-thinking and hold progressive views.
Even so, the women in the book look forward to find and marry decent men and enjoy the security, companionship, and pleasure that married life has to offer.
Marion Kaye is a character who caught my interest. Her fighting spirit in the face of grinding poverty and horrific domestic violence is admirable.
I loved the author’s writing style. All the various side stories flowed well together. It felt like watching a TV series, episode by episode.
The entire novel is about the feeling of belonging and togetherness as the Harpers girls watch out for each other and share in their joys and sorrows. Reading this book gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling and highlights the importance of having good, trustworthy friends.
The book ends with the WWI having reached Britain and the characters signing up for various war duties.
The next book in the series should be quite an interesting read!
Book Details
(Welcome To Harpers Emporium Book 3)
Genre: Saga, Historical Fiction
Publication date: June 2, 2020
Publisher: Boldwood Books
Rainy Days for the Harpers Girls
Hard times ahead for the Harpers girls… It is two years since Harpers opened in Oxford Street and Ben is planning to expand the premises.
Life is good for Sally and Ben as they look forward to their first child and hope for a prosperous future. Beth is settling into married life with Jack, gradually recovering from her aunt’s tragic death, though still unable to conceive a child.
New girls have joined Harpers and Marion, Janice and Becky all become a part of the daily life at the busy store. Rachel is undecided whether to marry a man she isn’t sure she can trust, while Minnie meets an old love.
The sun is shining in English streets but on the horizon dark clouds gather over Europe and war looms threatening bringing rainy days for the Harpers girls…
Rosie Clarke is a #1 bestselling saga writer whose most recent books include The Mulberry Lane series. She has written over 100 novels under different pseudonyms and is a RNA Award winner. She lives in Cambridgeshire.
I’m taking part in the blog tour for “In Two Minds” by K.T. Findlay, thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources.
Today, I have an interesting Q&A from the author to share with you.
I thank the author for taking the time to answer my questions.
K.T. Findlay
Tell us a bit about the time travel theme of your story.
“In Two minds” explores what might happen if someone’s journey to the afterlife went wrong, and they wound up in someone else’s body, with that person still in it, hence the title — In Two Minds. In this case, museum curator Thomas finds himself sharing the body of Wulfstan, a Dark Ages prince.
In most time travel stories, the traveller uses either a machine or a portal, which of course allows them the possibility of returning back to their own time. For Thomas that’s just not going to happen. He and Wulfstan are stuck good and proper and so have to make the best of it while the body randomly swaps which of them is in charge from moment to moment.
Was there any special research required to write the story?
Heaps!
I wanted the reader to be in as realistic a world as possible, so there’s a whole load of research right there, investigating things like clothes, food, cooking, social structures, how they fought, farmed, married and so on.
Plus of course, “In Two Minds” is set in a real time in history, with real people and real events. It’s true that we don’t know a lot of detail about that, but we do know some and that provided the historical structure into which the story plays out.
Then there’s the technology side of things. The only thing Thomas brings to the party is his mind and all the things he knows that the others do not. Everything in the book is as realistic and as practical as possible, so it actually would work if you tried it yourself. You might well struggle to do it, but the information I’ve given in the book is correct.
All of that did, as you can imagine, take an awful lot of time to research…
How did the idea for the story come about?
The original inspiration came from watching James Burke’s Connections TV series while I was recovering from a very serious illness. I was fascinated by the fact that a single idea can change the world, but only if the time is right for it to flourish, and only if it finds itself in the right hands to make it work. But that doesn’t just mean that society’s technical capabilities have to be in place to make that jump, society itself has to be persuaded to actually do it.
Now that’s of interest to me, but it would have had a fairly small audience if that’s all there was to it.
It was the second idea of two souls from different times trapped together in the same body that really kickstarted In Two Minds, because then you’ve got a truly fascinating story, with a massive culture clash, a huge age gap, the swirls of politics in a violent royal court and lots more besides. Thomas’s new ideas then become key structural elements within the book that allow him to do the things he does, but they’re underpinnings and not the central part of the story.
The third key idea came very quickly when the research revealed that British Anglo Saxon women, at that particular time, had an awful lot more rights and influence than we tend to think they did. And that opened up the whole idea of Wulfstan’s female warriors as a realistic possibility and not just an outlandish fantasy.
With those three ideas all swirling together, sparking off each other, In Two Minds was off and running, dancing and twisting inside my head.
Did you find any scenes/chapters challenging to write?
There are times when the reader has to be given key bits of information, either as background, or as an explanation of how something works. If you leave those bits out, you’re leaving holes in the reader’s knowledge that can badly catch you out later on, but if you include them, you have to do those bits in a way that the reader will enjoy and that doesn’t slow the book down. That’s a lot more difficult to write than anything dramatic.
What is your writing process like?
Quite different now to what it was when I first started.
It starts with the idea, a rough plot and a couple of key characters. I start to flesh that out, exploring different ideas and getting to know the characters. Initially those characters are lightly drawn, almost caricatures, but quite rapidly they flesh themselves out into very real people within my mind, and then everything flows from there. At that point I know what each of them would and would not do and it becomes almost a collaborative effort between us.
My physical writing process has changed dramatically since I started, but that’s a whole other story.
How difficult is it to balance history and fiction when writing a book like this?
Very hard if you want things to be realistic and true to the period, AND you want the book to be a fast flowing and interesting read. It’s not just a question of balance either, it’s very much the way you get things across that matters.
Standalone First Book in the Prince Wulfstan Series
Hurled twelve hundred years into the past, into someone else’s body, things could hardly be worse. And then the body’s owner wanted it back…
Museum curator Thomas and ten year old Anglo Saxon Wulfstan have to cope with a fifty year age gap, a huge culture clash and never knowing from one moment to the next who’s going to be in control.
As they’re trying to come to terms with it all, they inadvertently antagonise Wulfstan’s father, King Offa of Mercia. The King is already frustrated with his son’s “late” development and issues the boy a challenge. Wulfstan is given just a year to find and train ten slaves who can beat the King’s own champions in a fight to the death, but there’s a twist.
When his son accepts the challenge, Offa turns the screws to make him back down and limits him to females only. In the brute strength world of Anglo Saxon battle they surely haven’t a chance, but Thomas convinces Wulfstan that if they can find the right people, a few new ideas and enough practice might just give those women the tools to become the heroes Wulfstan so desperately needs.
K.T. Findlay lives on a small farm where he dovetails his writing with fighting the blackberry and convincing the quadbike that killing its rider isn’t a vital part of its job description.
Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres, especially if it is about India. I was quite excited to find that The Brahmin is about Ashoka and his spymaster. Ashoka’s second queen, Asandhimitra, also plays an important part in the story.
There are detailed descriptions of palace architecture and layout, costumes, and customs and rituals. It is interesting to see how the Greek way of life has been absorbed by the Mauryans. The intermeshing of Macedonians and Magadhans is apparent throughout the story as Greek soldiers play a key role in this whodunnit.
Chanakya’s pupil, The Brahmin, who is also the head of the king’s Secret Service, is one of the few people trusted by Ashoka. Aided by his favorite spies, Hao and Antochlius, The Brahmin sets out to discover who has killed one of the king’s concubines.
In the process, it appears Queen Asandhimitra is also implicated in the murder! Radhagupta, Ashoka’s prime minister, and Lord Suma, a Kalinga spy who is also the ambassador to Magadha, weave their own deadly webs to trap the Brahmin and destroy the king’s trust in him.
Before the first murder can be solved, there is a second murder–further denting the Brahmin’s reputation as an efficient spy. A famed assassin, the Blood Flower, seems to be working for Kalinga, making the spymaster’s work doubly difficult.
Will the spymaster be able to solve the murder within seven days–as demanded by Ashoka? Will he be able unravel the secrets that the Queen is keeping from the king? Will Magadha be able to keep the Kalingan threat at bay?
The pace of storytelling is just right–a lot is happening, with the right amount of violence and emotion. There is a strong Buddhist influence; the characters evoke various responses to the Buddha–from hate to veneration.
However, the plot is so complex that the mystery is more of a brain teaser. Too many secrets, too much intrigue. It was off-putting at times to be unable to follow the numerous threads.
The ambassador’s plotting behind Queen Asandhimitra’s birthday gift was easy to guess, but the Greek and Buddhist connection baffled me. Even after the Brahmin revealed (almost) all at the end in a Hercule Poirot style, I still had several questions unanswered.
Perhaps a more discerning mind or a deeper reading is needed to understand the story. Had the plot been slightly simpler, I might have enjoyed the book more.
(I accessed the book via a Kindle Unlimited subscription.)
Satabdi Mukherjee 