JULIA CHILD AND HER BATTLE PLAN FOR BAKING A CHOCOLATE CAKE

RHYS BOWEN:  I met Julia Child once, at an upscale eatery in San Francisco. My publishers had taken me there but when Julia and Paul sat at the next table they lost all interest in me, only fascinated by what she was going to eat next. I saw her as a tall, gawky, middle aged woman, one who dropped her chicken during her TV cooking classes. Loveable but clumsy.  Imagine then my surprise when my friend Diana Chambers told me she was writing a book about Julia as a WWII spy.

    "Are you crazy?" I said. But she shook her head. "It's all true. I've checked all the sources. She really was a spy in Asia during the war."

    Holy cow! What a scoop! What a story!  I gave Diana my input as she was writing it and cheered with her when it was finally sold. And now I'm happy to have her as my guest to tell you about the birth of THE SECRET WAR OF JULIA CHILD.

 RHYS: Welcome, dear Diana. Where did the idea for this book come from? Have you always been fascinated with Julia Child? How did you hear about her wartime adventures?

 DIANA: About ten years ago, I read that during World War Two, Julia Child had served in the OSS, America’s first espionage agency. I blinked and sat up straight. The Julia Child? The matronly TV chef?

But SPIES? And in India and China?! Something sparked inside me. I felt electrified. Somehow I KNEW...This was it...MY STORY...I had to investigate...but I knew...

However first, I’d have to get to know Julia McWilliams Child. I was not a Julia fangirl—and not a cook. In fact, I try to keep as far from the kitchen as possible! So I knew her mainly as this quirky woman with an upraised spoon, frumpy wardrobe, and problematic hairdo.

RHYS: How much of the story is fact? How much did you make up?

 DIANA: The wartime experiences of Julia McWilliams on the front lines of Asia is based closely on the available historical record. That was my scaffolding. Still, it wasn’t Julia who first drew me to the story, but its espionage setting in India and China—where I have long ties. At university, I studied India art and history. I first traveled there around 30, the same age Julia, as I would learn, arrived on a Navy troopship! At that time, I began an export business and have returned often over the years. I’ve also traveled around China and SE Asia. Penguin Random House India published my post-WWII novel, The Star of India, a few years ago. An honor that was especially meaningful when my Indian agent, editor, and several journalists told me they had to keep reminding themselves that I was a “foreigner.”

Even with this background, I had a LOT to learn! Fortunately I love research.

I read everything I could get my hands on...but especially for the day-to-day life, I had to fill in the gaps. By now I’d come to admire Julia—LOVE her—and wanted to tell a story I believed was honest to her truth. This is historical fiction, a product of my educated imagination.

One thing I can say is true: That twinkle in Julia’s eye you see on television? She had that twinkle her entire life! She’d always been bubblng with creativity, humor, and zest for life. As a girl, she directed, wrote and acted in plays she produced in her family’s Pasadena attic. Around this time, she confided to her diary and mother her goal of becoming a “famous woman writer.” But she was also tall, gawky, insecure. She had a lot to overcome.

RHYS:  Have you been to the places you write about? How hard is it to write about places you haven’t been? What sort of research did you do?

DIANA: As part of telling Julia’s story, I wanted to walk in her size 12A shoes, journeying through the touchstones of her life. I visited all of the locations in the book, except Chabua, the Indian airbase at the foot of the Himalayas...from which she flies a cargo plane “over the Hump” to China. But I’d been in Kashmir and the Karakoram mountains of China and Pakistan. So I had a good “feel” for the location. As far as my book research, I read wide and deep...biographies, memoirs, military, political, cultural accounts...Books on espionage and cryptography. Narratives from the local perspectives.

It’s also important to remember that much of the Office of Strategic Services’ archives were classified until the 21st C so scholars have had less time to study and write about them. Also Western eyes have been more focused on Europe/Pacific. No wonder it’s called, The Forgotten War in Asia.

 RHYS:  It’s been a complicated publishing journey to bring this book to birth. Tell us a little about it.

 DIANA: Very complicated...very long. It’s been hard work along the way, many heartbreaks. Agents have retired or disappointed me. Queries have been rejected—or ignored. Also there was work on The Star of India. But I had a deep belief in this novel—I knew readers would want to read Julia’s story.

 RHYS: And after all that struggle good things started finally happening. Tell us more.

After getting off the plane in Nashville for August’s Bouchercon, I opened an email to learn THE SECRET WAR OF JULIA CHILD was being featured in People magazine as a Best Book of the Fall, a Must Read! Everyones love Julia. 

 RHYS: What did Julia take from her wartime days that laid the groundwork for her later success?

DIANA:  That's a fascinating questions! Promoted to serve in India, Julia has sensory experiences she could have never imagined—sights, sounds, colors, smells...flavors that blast open her taste buds. Then she meets mapmaker Paul, a true foodie. She opens to the world. As she would say in later years, “The war made me.”  

Have you seen the YouTube clip of Julia’s oven door taped shut to protect her soufflé? Anyone who dares enter, she proclaims, will be COURTMARTIALED.

Then there’s the one of Julia and her BATTLE PLAN for baking a chocolate cake...her ingredients and implements lined-up on the counter...

During war, equipment must be deployed in a specific manner, like an order of battle in the field. Procedures matter—just like a written recipe. Remember, her dream of becoming a “famous woman writer”? Now, Julia set out to document France’s precious culinary traditions!

In the OSS, Julia learned to keep her ears open and head down…absorb info through her senses. In Paris, she worked hard chopping onions at the Cordon Bleu (as she had at the OSS), so she’d be respected enough to move up to next level. She was accepted into the local cooking community—now able to ferret out recipes, techniques, SECRETS of French cuisine.

RHYS: I know you'll all be absolutely fascinated by this book. I see MOVIE written all over it. It is now in stores. So feel free to ask Diana any questions. She will give away a signed copy of the book to one lucky commenter!

THE SECRET WAR OF JULIA CHILD

Coming Oct 22 from Sourcebooks Landmark!

A People Best Book Fall 2024–“Must-Read”

The Spies Who Inspired Me

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: In reading today’s wonderful post, I had a thought. Writers are always looking for the idea that inspires them to write a book, of course. That one snippet or meeting or even a scrap of dialogue.

But the wonderful Jane Healey—a dear and treasured friend, and we have signed together many times—had a double inspiration experience.

Yes, she was looking for her next idea, her next set of characters, her next situation. And, as she tells the story to us today, she found it.

And then—the idea became an obstacle.

And then, the very inspirational characters she found—inspired her to go on.

It seemed to me that the women she discovered just turned around, pointed their fingers at her, and said: Hey, sister. DO this!

Jane tells the story better than I ever could. Listen.

Taking a Risk to Write about Risk Takers

By Jane Healey

I am a huge fan of mysteries and thrillers, and I admire the authors that are part of this group, so I am so happy and honored to be here at Jungle Red Writers today! To introduce myself - I am a historical fiction writer and I live just outside of Boston. My first two novels, The Saturday Evening Girls Club and The Beantown Girls, were both stories that focused on lesser known women in history. The Saturday Evening Girls Club is based on an actual club of Jewish and Italian immigrant women in Boston’s North End at the turn of the twentieth century. The Beantown Girls is based on the true stories of the Red Cross Clubmobile girls of World War Two.

My newly released novel, The Secret Stealers, is also about a lesser known group of women in history. The twist is, it happens to be a spy thriller, and I want to tell you a little about how I came to write the story, almost despite myself. After the Beantown Girls, it took me awhile to figure out what my next novel would be about. I keep a file of possible story ideas – articles that I find, excerpts from books, youtube videos – anything that I think might have that special spark that might evolve into a novel.

One of the articles in this idea file was from the Washington Post. Published in June 2011, it was about two best friends in a retirement community in Virginia. The friends, Elizabeth “Betty” McIntosh and Doris Bohrer, lived on the same street in the Westminster at Lake Ridge Seniors Village in Prince William County.

Upon meeting, they bonded over a highly unusual connection—both women had been spies overseas in WWII in the OSS, and later had long careers with the CIA. McIntosh had served in Asia, and, even at ninety-six, still struggled with the guilt over unwittingly handing off an explosive disguised as a piece of coal to a Chinese operative. The bomb ended up blowing up a train, killing hundreds of Japanese soldiers. Bohrer served in Italy, gathering intelligence on what the Nazis were building by analyzing aerial photographs.

I was aware of the British female spies of the SOE during World War II, but had never really heard much about American female spies. I began asking the questions that I always did before starting a new project—who were these women? What were their stories?

Doris and Betty’s story had that spark of fascination for me, but I knew if I wrote their story, to do justice to their history, it had to be a spy thriller.

And that was where I hit that wall of self-doubt that I think many people can relate to when you’re trying to create or do something that you’ve never done before. Yes, I had always dreamed of writing a thriller, and I loved the idea of writing a historical spy thriller, but what if I didn’t have it in me as a writer? Or, worse, what if I wrote one and it turned out to be rubbish?

For the first couple of months while I was doing research, I was gripped with fear and uncertainty every time I faced that blank page with “Chapter One” at the top. Deep down, my biggest worry was that the novel wouldn’t live up to my expectations for it, and I would disappoint my readers as a result.

However, the more I continued to research these brave, trail blazing women, women who risked everything to work overseas as spies for the Allies, some of whom lost their lives for the cause, the more they inspired me to the point that I couldn’t not try to tell a fictionalized version of their story.

Learning the answer to “Who were these women?” sent me down the most fascinating research rabbit holes. There was the brilliant and unflappable Betty Lussier, who was recruited out of college to become part of the OSS’s counterespionage unit, known as X-2. She helped establish an extensive double agent net in Perpignan, France, tracking down collaborators and Nazi agents.

Another of these fearless women was Elizabeth Deveraux Rochester, an elegant, steely socialite with a British mother and American father, who happened to be in Europe when the Germans occupied France. Rather than flee home, she became a courier in occupied France for the OSS and SOE, bringing messages to the resistance and helping smuggle refugees and downed Allied airmen out of the country.

Virginia Hall is perhaps the most famous of these female spies, finally getting her due as both fiction and non-fiction books have been written about her in recent years. She was trained by the SOE because she originally worked for that organization, as an undercover agent in France before America entered the war. 

Known as the “Limping Lady” because she had lost one leg in a hunting accident, Hall’s accomplishments were extraordinary. An expert wireless radio operator, she helped create agent networks, recruited French civilians to establish safe houses, helped prisoners of war escape and arranged air drops of supplies for the French Resistance. The Gestapo referred to as “one of the most dangerous Allied agents in France” and vowed to find and destroy her. They did not succeed.

Here were these amazing lesser known stories of women in history, but with a level of danger, intrigue and stakes that compelled me to push past my fears and start writing. I was so incredibly inspired by every single one of them, I finally stepped outside of my creative comfort zone, to write the kind of spy thriller that I hope will not only honor their history, but also entertain and enlighten readers. It is the hardest creative project I have ever worked on, but it’s also the one that I am the most proud of.

I’m hoping somewhere Betty McIntosh and Doris Bohrer are reminiscing about their days in the OSS, sharing their old stories, and happy that someone else decided to share them too.


HANK: Of course they are! And they are applauding you, too. Reds and readers, what questions do you have for Jane? Were any of your relatives in the OSS? And what voices do YOU hear from the past?

 

Jane Healey is the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestselling author of The Beantown Girls and The Saturday Evening Girls Club. When her daughters were young, Jane Healey left a career in high tech to fulfill her dream of writing historical fiction about little-known women in history. It was a passion that has turned into something much more. Jane shares a home north of Boston with her husband, two daughters, and two cats. When she’s not writing, she enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, running, cooking, and going to the beach. For more information on the author or upcoming events or to schedule a book club visit, please visit her website, https://janehealey.com.