No Dogs Were Harmed in Midnight on the Marne by Sarah Adlahka

 JENN McKINLAY: Today I am delighted to host Sarah Adlahka, who shares with us the challenges of writing about a gruesome time in history (WWI) without being too horrific. Quite the impossibility, right? Well, Sarah has some thoughts...welcome, Sarah! 

And, Readers, just look at the cover of this novel -- gorgeous!

SARAH: I believe it was during round 2 of revisions for my historical fiction novel Midnight on the Marne that my editor gave me this advice:

 

“Think about your audience as women browsing the shelves at Target in search of their next book club pick.”

 

She had already convinced me to cut the detailed interrogation scenes where the protagonist Marcelle is being questioned (tortured) by a German general about her espionage, and she was trying to get me to see that, while the mystery-meat a starving French family would have been eating for Christmas in 1918 might very well have been dog, readers in 2022 – dog lovers in particular – would not be so keen to pick up a book where Fido was the main course. Now to be fair, they weren’t eating their own dog. I do have my limitations.

 

But how do you write a book about WWI without highlighting the horrors of war? And how do you highlight the horrors of war without getting into the gritty and gruesome details?

 

Write the story you want to write.

Stay true to yourself.

Paint an authentic picture.

 

As authors, we hear advice like this all the time. Whether from well-meaning friends who are just trying to encourage us or from critique partners who know how difficult it is to be in the writing trenches. And it makes sense, right? If we’re going to invest years of our lives into a book, shouldn’t it be authentic? Shouldn’t an historical fiction novel reflect the truest details of history, the bygone eras we spend months, maybe even years, researching?

 

I want to say yes.

 

I want to be among the die-hards who believe that you really must stay true to your subject matter – down to the grittiest details – to make your words sing. And maybe you do. But making your words sing is not necessarily the same thing as making your words sell. And since we’re in the business of selling words – or books – it just might be a good idea to listen to your editor. They are, after all, just trying to sell your book, and selling books is a tricky business.

 

Like most things in life, success as an author is linked to the shifting tides of public opinion. It’s linked to trends. And trends change. Opinions change. What’s popular, or even acceptable, in print and television changes from one decade to the next, maybe even from one year to the next, and this was a difficult lesson for me to learn.

 

I wanted my scenes to be authentic. I wanted my readers to feel the sharp edges of a broken chair, to hear the cries of men over a battlefield, to see the color of war as the sun came up over the horizon. And while it felt like my artistic freedom was being taken away, like I was being asked to paint a rosy sheen over the gruesome reality of war, what I eventually learned was that I was being given a gift. I was not being asked to eliminate those realities; I was being tasked with conveying those horrors through the repercussions they would have on my characters.

 

The effects of an interrogation – the restless sleep, the hypervigilance around men, the inability to trust – are more significant to the development of a character than the actual event itself. So, while the German general’s interrogation of Marcelle might have been what changed her, it was the consequences of that interrogation that really brought life to her character, that guided her to react the way she did throughout the rest of the story. I didn’t need to show the interrogation for it to have an impact.

 

And that was the challenge.

 

As authors we’re constantly being told show don’t tell. Show me that war is dreadful. Show me that battles are brutal. Show me that starvation is ugly. But perhaps we take it too far sometimes. Perhaps we don’t need to see a woman being beaten to understand the repercussions of trauma; perhaps we don’t need to see the carnage of a battlefield to understand the foundation of PTSD; and perhaps we don’t need to see a family eating a dog to understand the desperation of starvation.

 

It was a difficult lesson for me to learn, but a valuable one no doubt, and you can be sure that if you’re browsing through the Target bookshelves and happen upon Midnight on the Marne, you won’t find any dogs being harmed on its pages.

JENN: What do you think, Reds and Readers? How much grisly fact is too much? 

Book Summary:

Set during the heroism and heartbreak of World War I, and in an occupied France in an alternative timeline, Sarah Adlakha’s Midnight on the Marne explores the responsibilities love lays on us and the rippling impact of our choices.

France, 1918. Nurse Marcelle Marchand has important secrets to keep. Her role as a spy has made her both feared and revered, but it has also put her in extreme danger from the approaching German army.

American soldier George Mountcastle feels an instant connection to the young nurse. But in times of war, love must wait. Soon, George and his best friend Philip are fighting for their lives during the Second Battle of the Marne, where George prevents Philip from a daring act that might have won the battle at the cost of his own life.

On the run from a victorious Germany, George and Marcelle begin a new life with Philip and Marcelle’s twin sister, Rosalie, in a brutally occupied France. Together, this self-made family navigates oppression, near starvation, and unfathomable loss, finding love and joy in unexpected moments.

Years pass, and tragedy strikes, sending George on a course that could change the past and rewrite history. Playing with time is a tricky thing. If he chooses to alter history, he will surely change his own future―and perhaps not for the better.

Sarah Adlakha is a native of Chicago who now lives along the Mississippi Gulf Coast with her husband, three daughters, two horses, and one dog. She started writing fiction shortly after retiring from her psychiatry practice. Her debut novel, She Wouldn’t Change a Thing, was a CNN most anticipated book of 2021. Midnight on the Marne is her second novel.

All Gods Dead: a Guest Post by Donis Casey

RHYS BOWEN:  Donis Casey is one of my Arizona pals so I was excited to find that she was branching out from her terrific Oklahoma series and creating an exciting new heroine--a star of the silent screen in 1920s Hollywood. I'm delighted to host her today and share her essay on MYSTERIES SET BETWEEN THE WARS  (a subject that is close to my own heart!)

DONIS CASEY:

Many times in my life I have encountered a strange phenomenon that occurs whenever I think I've had an original idea. Suddenly that idea will reproduce itself like bunnies in the minds of others. For instance, if I had named a son Jason in 1981, which at the time I thought no boy had been named since the Argonauts sailed, he'd have been one of ten Jasons in his kindergarten class.

I encountered this "group consciousness" phenomenon last year after I wrote the final novel of the Alafair Tucker series, which is set in the insular world of rural Oklahoma in the 1910s. Forty Dead Men deals with the effects of World War I, both on those who went to battle and those who served at home. Everything had changed in my characters' lives during the brief decade that the series covered. I had finally reached the time of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken." (This Side of Paradise, 1920)

I was energized and excited to plunge into an entirely new series that takes place during the roaring 1920s, The Adventures of Bianca Dangereuse, featuring a headstrong girl who runs away from home in 1920 and by sheer will and a lot of good fortune ends up a silent movie star. The first episode, The Wrong Girl (2019), came to be in the most organic way, but could it be that I've tuned in to the zeitgeist yet again? Over the past few years there has been a spate of wonderful series set in the period between the two world wars and featuring fabulous women who were strong enough to change themselves as radically as their circumstances had changed – Charles Todd's Bess Crawford, Rhys Bowen's Lady Georgie, Catriona McPherson's Dandy Gilver, and Kerry Greenwood's inimitable Phrynne Fisher, just to name a few great ones. We are about to enter the 2020s, one hundred years after the end of the Great War, and there are eerie parallels to the turn of the 20th century. There was a desperation to the years between the wars that reminds me of today. Nothing has been quite the same since 2001. We are cynical, foolhardy, afraid of "the other", and eager for distraction.I've read several excellent new books by authors who have joined me up here in the collective-consciousness-sphere and written impressive stories about those dark inter-war years and women who rose to the occasion. Anna Lee Huber's action filled mystery Penny for Your Secrets (2019) is a well-researched and engaging look at the lingering aftermath of war. It features former British Secret Service agent Verity Kent, who is trying to adjust to her post-WWI life and repair her marriage after a three year separation. When Verity's friend Ada, Lady Rockham, jokingly threatens to shoot her husband at a dinner party, her ill-advised attempt at humor makes her the prime suspect when Lord Rockham is shot to death that very night. In the meantime, one of Verity's ex-colleagues at MI5 asks her to investigate the death of her half-sister. The police believe the woman's murder was a botched robbery, but nothing is missing from her room except letters her French cousins wrote to her during the war. Verity stumbles upon a clue that links the two seemingly unrelated deaths together by an unlikely event - a wartime shipwreck on the French coast in which the entire crew disappeared. In Maisie Dobbs (2003), Jacqueline Winspear's working-class Englishwoman Maisie Dobbs manages to lift herself out of servitude through brains and hard work. But when WWI breaks out and Maisie volunteers as a nurse, her tragic experiences change her. After the war, she decides that the best way to help herself and others is to utilize her own extraordinary intuition as a private investigator. Winspear's beautiful use of period detail, as well as the quiet, driven, character of Maisie herself are irresistible. The Maisie Dobbs series has grown to fifteen books, taking the reader through the entire inter-war period. Her most recent Maisie Dobbs mystery,The American Agent (2019), is set in London during the Blitz of 1940. Maisie is still dealing with her own traumas, but she has grown and learned even if the world never does. In much of the United States, the only thing that changed for some after the first war was that many women were left to pick up the pieces when their men either did not return or returned irreparably damaged. The Hollows (Jan. 2020), set in the fall of 1926, is Jess Montgomery's evocative sequel to The Widows (2019) and continues the story of Bronwyn County, Ohio, Sheriff Lily Ross and her friends. Lily is called to investigate the death of an elderly woman who has fallen from the top of Moonvale Hollow tunnel into the path of an oncoming train. Lily learns that the woman, Thea Kincaide, has escaped from the Hollows Asylum for the Insane. In retracing Thea's path from the asylum to the site of her death, Lily finds disturbing evidence that the war did not lay all the evils of the past to rest. Beautifully written, poetic, and full of fascinating historical detail, Montgomery portrays the strength of the brave women who became the pillars and support of their families in the face of their own grief after losing their husbands. 

The Pearl Dagger (2019), L.A. Chandlar's third Art Deco Mystery, set in 1937, is a love letter to Depression-era New York City, filled with eccentric, colorful characters both real and fictional. After a cop friend is killed in an ambush, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's personal aide Lane Sanders and Detective Finn Brodie learn that a nefarious international crime syndicate called the Red Scroll may be behind a plot to bring down the crime-busting mayor. But Red Scroll was believed to have gone out of business years earlier when its mastermind Rex Ruby died. Could someone be trying to resurrect his criminal empire? LaGuardia sends Lane and Finn to England to investigate, where they find that the past is never past, and it's also very personal.

The atmospheric and intricately plotted Gallows Court (2019) is the first in a new series by Martin Edwards. Set in London in 1930, it features rich, reclusive, mysterious Rachel Savernake, and a callow young reporter for the Clarion named Jacob Flint. When the Clarion's chief crime reporter is critically injured by a hit and run driver, Jacob takes over the job of investigating a series of horrific deaths that all have a connection to a cryptic secret society. The elusive Rachel keeps turning up with leads for Jacob to follow, but is she really helping him or leading him down the garden party? In fact, is Rachel at all who she seems to be? Is anyone involved with this dark, twisted case what they appear? Edwards has evoked a grim, sooty, inter-war world, shrouded in fog and evil intentions.The era between World War I and World War II is one of my favorite periods of history. It's a world reeling from the shock of a global bloodbath, a devastating pandemic, and unchecked growth and greed. By 1920, everything had changed. Women had done their bit and finally knew their own worth, and all the rules of pre-war society were changing. People were disillusioned with politics and religion had failed them. Then the decade of the 1920s roared itself right off a cliff, and the early thirties began a long, slow, slide into chaos. But hard times create tough people. It was a time for everyone, especially women, to reinvent themselves.____________Donis Casey is the author of The Wrong Girl, the first episode of a fresh new series starring Bianca LaBelle, star of the silent screen action serial, The Adventures of Bianca Dangereuse. In addition to this coming-of-age tale of a girl in the glamorous 1920s, Casey is also the author of the Alafair Tucker Mysteries, an award-winning series featuring the sleuthing mother of ten children, set in Oklahoma during the booming 1910s. Donis is a former teacher, academic librarian, and entrepreneur. She lives in Tempe, Arizona.

http://www.doniscasey.com

On Being Heroic

RHYS BOWEN: Would I be any good in a war?

My new book, THE VICTORY GARDEN, is all about women being called upon to do tasks that would have been considered beyond their ability during a time of war. They step up, don't complain, and take on the jobs the men are not coming home to do. In each of the World Wars women have shown the world just how amazing and capable they are. 

Having just been on a panel with Kate Quinn and learned about the Night Witches, who flew ten or more bombing raids every night for three years in a row, with ten minutes to reload and off again, and then thinking about her previous book, The Alice Network, about young women spies in France, I found myself wondering what use I would be in a war.

Could I be a spy? A coder? Anything brave?

I speak really good German, even a German dialect. I used to imagine myself working as a British spy, wondering if my German would fail me at the last minute when faced with a Nazi officer. When I was at university in South Germany the people in the house where I roomed called me Das Fraulein von Nordern (the girl from the north) and when I was in North Germany I was known for my southern accent. So I think I would pass in most circumstances. But would I have those veins of ice to sit calmly having a drink with a leading Nazi, while listening to his plans for a bombing raid and then rushing home to get out my radio? I don’t think so, but then I don’t know. 

I do remember once smuggling in a camera I had bought in Germany without paying the duty on it. I gave it to a German friend to carry through customs. At the last minute, in the customs hall, she lost her nerve and handed it back to me in full view of the officers. My heart was pounding as I approached the table.I made it through, my face probably bright red and looking guilty, but they didn't bother to search an eighteen year old student. I didn’t enjoy that experience!

None of us know what we are capable of until we are faced with it. When my kids were involved in competitive swimming I noticed that some swimmers were amazing in practice and everyday competition but folded in big meets. One of my daughters could pull out amazing times when it really mattered. So I guess we are all like that… some of us thrive under pressure, some don’t.

I’ve been trying to think of any times when I had a chance to be heroic. I was certainly cool enough when my kids were injured, including the time when my daughter came to me saying, “I think I’ve hurt myself” and her arm bone was sticking out at the elbow. I covered it quickly, reassured her it could be easily fixed and rushed her to hospital. They strung it up to the ceiling to pull the bone back into place and I…. I went outside to throw up!

The closest I can think of to calm under adversity was when I was fifteen, going to drama school in London and I came to Charring Cross station to find it closed.  The fog was awful that evening—a real pea souper. There had been a massive train crash somewhere down the line but nobody knew anything. I managed to telephone my parents but there was nothing they could do. My father certainly couldn’t come out in the car in such conditions. I tried to take a bus. There were none. I talked with other people at the bus stop and we decided to walk south as a group. The fog was so thick that we had to peer at street signs from a foot away to try to read them. We passed quite close to the train crash and heard the sound of ambulances through the fog. It was eerie and scary.  One by one people dropped off as they came to their part of town. I lived outside London. Fourteen miles to be exact. And the last five miles I walked on my own, getting home at 2 in the morning. My parents were frantic-no cell phones and the lines were jammed because of the train crash.  Of course now I would have found a hotel room in London and told them that my parents would pay in the morning, or even slept the night at the station, but fifteen year olds just want to get home.

So I don’t think I could be a spy. I certainly couldn’t fly fighter planes. I don’t relish thrills or danger. I am a wimp when it comes to roller coasters. I hate scary movies. But I might have enjoyed working at Bletchley Park in the war. I like puzzles and challenges. I’m not madly good at crosswords, certainly not a brilliant mathematical brain, but I could have translated from German and tried to decipher what the German words meant. The only thing I would have found really hard was that they had to sign the official secrets act. They could tell nobody what they were doing. Nobody. Could have kept this from my parents, from my spouse, for fifty years? Frankly I don’t think so!

So dear Reds and readers… have you ever had to be heroic? Do you think you could be if the time came?

In Flanders Field, Thoughts for Veteran's Day

RHYS BOWEN: Today we salute all veterans, those still living and those who paid the ultimate sacrifice. This year the day is especially significant as it marks the hundred year anniversary of the end of WWI.


Also known as the Great War, and for many years as THE WAR TO END ALL WARS, it was the deadliest war in human history. It killed nine million military combatants and an estimated seven million civilians. It also weakened the world population with hunger and deprivation so that when the flu struck in 1918 with a particularly virulent strain it became a worldwide pandemic that killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide.

It was particularly brutal for those who had to fight as it was run by generals used to cavalry charges, who instead sent their troops against tanks and mustard gas. Imagine living in a trench, wet, cold, often knee deep in mud, then being sent "over the top" while bullets and grenades fell around you. And all to gain maybe five yards of territory, before losing it again the next day. Each assault resulted in thousands of lives lost per yard gained. It was insane. Apart from the physical wounds, the blinding and damaged lungs of mustard gas, there were the psychological wounds. To be sitting on the lawn in England, eating strawberries and cream one minute and the next day being sent back to that hell was too much for many young minds. And PTSD was not understood in those days. When they cracked and simply couldn't join an assault they were shot for cowardice.  The men who made it home were horribly damaged.

And all of this started because an anarchist assassinated an obscure archduke in a small Balkans town! I hope it makes us all think how little it takes to light the flames of ambition and conquest and how devastating the effects of the smallest act can be.

I've actually just been immersed in this topic as my next novel, that comes out in February, takes place in the Great War, and it deals with what happens when the men in a village are not coming home and women are called to do things they did not think possible. It's called The Victory Garden.

So let us all pause for a moment of silence this morning and think of all the men and women, in all of the wars, who did what they were called upon to do, with bravery and stoicism. Who died far from home in foreign fields, or came home broken. We salute them all.
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CHARLES TODD--THE WALNUT TREE: A HOLIDAY TALE

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Missing Downton Abbey? Need the perfect Christmas book? Well, today we have a special treat for you on Jungle Red. With us are Caroline and Charles Todd, the mother and son writing team.  As Charles Todd they are the authors of two acclaimed mystery series--the Inspector Rutledge novels and the Bess Crawford novels--set during and after World War I.

But the Todds (who are among the hardest working and most prolific authors I know) have departed from suspense to give us an unexpected gift, THE WALNUT TREE, a bittersweet love story set at Christmas during the dangerous opening months of World War I.

In 1914, while visiting her friend Madeleine in Paris, Lady Elspeth Douglas's life is thrown into chaos when war breaks out and the Germans quickly overrun Belgium, threatening France. Having just agreed to marry Alain, Madeleine's dashing brother, Lady Elspeth watches him leave to join his unit, and then she sets out for England, only to find herself trapped on the French coast.
Elspeth—daughter of a Highland aristocrat whose distinguished family can trace its roots back to the court of Mary, Queen of Scots—decides to make herself useful, carrying water to weary soldiers near the Front. It is an act of charity that almost gets her killed when enemy shells begin to explode around her. To her rescue comes Captain Peter Gilchrist, who pulls her away from the battle and leads her to safety. 

Back in London, surrounded by familiar comforts, Elspeth is haunted by the horrors she witnessed in France. She enrolls in a nursing course, where she meets a fellow nurse in training, Bess Crawford. It is a daring move, made without the consent of Elspeth's guardian, her cousin Kenneth, a high-handed man with rigid notions of class and femininity.

Yet Elspeth Douglas is a woman with a mind of her own, which—as she herself says—is a blessing and a curse. She is determined to return to the battlefields of France to do her part . . . and to find the man she has no right to love. In a world full of terror and uncertainty, can the sweetness of love survive or will Elspeth's troubled heart become another casualty of this terrible war?

Now the Todds tell us more.

DEBS: With two strong suspense series--the Inspector Rutledge novels, set just after WWI, and the Bess Crawford books, set during the war, THE WALNUT TREE is quite a departure for you. Why a love story?

TODDS:  We had never tried a holiday tale, and we thought it would be an interesting thing to do.  We hadn’t tackled the first days of the war, those frantic events of late summer 1914 when the Germans marched.  So that was the time frame, and we‘d already decided on a character who was quite different from Bess Crawford.   That gave us the personal touch.  And how better to see those early battles than through the eyes of a young woman who loved two men, one in the French army and one in the British?  Some of the greatest love stories have centered around war time.  Gone with the Wind and Casablanca, just to name two.

DEBS:  The heroine, Lady Elspeth Douglas, is of the same class and background as Lady Mary Crawley of Downton Abbey. Reading about Elspeth really brought home to me just how different were the lives of aristocratic young women from not only middle and working-class women of their time, but from our modern experience.  On the one hand, they had everything done for them. But on the other, they had no freedom to make decisions about their own lives. Was this one of the things that interested you?

 

TODDS:   Yes, from the beginning we realized that to have a heroine from the aristocracy, we had to see the world through her eyes.  To watch her struggle with the ordinary life of someone like Bess.  Lady Elspeth had been well educated—she could converse with bishops or take dancing with the Prince of Wales in stride, almost as her due.  But title and influence couldn’t make her a Sister.  She had to train for that like everyone else, making her own bed, washing her own uniforms, scrubbing hospital floors on her hands and knees.  And she did this knowing that her family would disapprove, quite a step toward independence.  It’s a measure of her determination that she finished her training and not only that, took pride in her accomplishment.

 DEBS:  THE WALNUT TREE takes place right at the beginning of the war. Why this period in particular?

TODDS:  People weren’t prepared for what lay ahead.  Most of them believed that the war would be over by Christmas, which gave us the holiday theme we were after.  Sadly, the fighting was intense from the start, and by the new year, 1915, France, Germany, and Britain had reached the stalemate that Rutledge knew so well as trench warfare.  It’s a prelude to Rutledge, in a way.  At the same time, it reflects what was happening to so many young people—hasty engagements, new relationships, the tumult of change, and meeting people who might or might not have been in one’s circle before August, 1914.  Lady Elspeth hadn’t seen Peter Gilchrist since she was a girl.  If the war hadn’t come along, she might never have known what sort of man he’d become.  Or had the chance to fall in love with him. She might have married the excellent young man her guardian chose for her and never known true happiness.   

DEBS:  Was it hard to resist the temptation to sneak a little mystery into the story (although there is the incident of the man on the train...)?

TODDS:  Not too hard, because in the chaos of war there are all sorts of things going.  We chose a mystery that we felt best showed what such upheaval  really meant.  The same thing happened in World War II, by the way, and with the Nazis, on an even grander scale.  Linda, Charles’s sister, happened to mention one day that such and such a thing interested her, and we thought, Perfect, just what we were looking for.   We won’t spoil it by saying more.

DEBS: Did you feel restricted by the novella length?

TODDS:  In the beginning we didn’t notice it.  But about halfway through, we realized that we could easily have told Lady Elspeth’s story in a full length novel.  THE WALNUT TREE is nearly two hundred and fifty pages as it is, so we came close!   There was so much to explore, both in Lady Elspeth’s background and in the lives of the two men who were so important to her.  We liked her cousins too, and could see lots of material there.  We’d decided on a novella to begin with to make it a great holiday read.  But it could be equally exciting any time of the year. 

DEBS: While I could tell there could have been more story, I really enjoyed the novella. It was a treat to have a story that could be read in a couple of evenings, and as much as I like series novels, it was refreshing to read a story that was complete in itself.  (Although maybe Bess could run across the characters in her next outing-)

TODDS:  This is one of the glories of stand-alones like THE WALNUT TREE—you can tell an entire story and see the beginning and the ending between page one and page whatever.  And that’s something we enjoy, as readers, so we like it as writers too.  At a signing recently someone mentioned that TREE  would make a lovely movie.  And we think they could be right, because it’s a whole.

DEBS:  Oh, it would make a wonderful movie! (Thinking of casting now...) And the cover of the book is absolutely beautiful. I've kept it on my nightstand just because I've enjoyed looking at it. Did you have any input?

TODDS:  Actually we did.  The art department came up with a brilliant cover, but it didn’t really have a holiday mystery look about it.  More a regular mystery.  So we suggested some possibilities, and the art department was enthusiastic, even to inserting that tree with the bare branches, which is the walnut tree of the title.  The result was just spectacular, and every time we see it, we feel the same sense of wonder that it turned out so beautifully.  Many reviews have featured the jacket, too, and I think for the same reason. 

DEBS: And what's up next for the prolific TODDS?

TODDS:   We’re in the midst of the line edits for the next Bess, which is A QUESTION OF HONOR, and should be out in June.  The next Rutledge is coming out at the end of January, and that’s PROOF OF GUILT.   We had a short story in STRAND Magazine  this summer, another one in THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES OF 2012, edited by Robert Crais, , and we’ll be in the MWA anthology out next April.  We have three more short stories to do. And while all this is going on, we’re starting the Rutledge for 2014.  And that’s going to be exciting.  

DEBS:  So looking forward to both the Rutledge and the Bess! 

Readers, the Todds will be checking in today to say "hi" and answer questions, so be sure to post your comments.  Oh, and one more thing. Caroline, I think you recently had an adventure with an owl. Will you tell us about it?

CAROLINE: Ah, the owl  It’s name is Raleigh, it’s a barred owl, and he (we think it’s a he, with owls it’s not always easy to tell)  is a resident of The Ruth Patrick Science Center, University of South Carolina at Aiken SC.  Deborah McMurtry, who teaches teachers and schoolchildren about predators in her lab at the Center, was kind enough to allow us to visit Raleigh and let me hold him on my wrist like a falcon  and talk to him for nearly an hour.  It’s an experience I will never forget. He has an injured wing and can’t be released to the wild, but he has given hundreds of school children a chance to look at a bird they have read about but probably have never seen in real life. 

PSS: A late edition--the Todds will give away a copy of The Walnut Tree to a lucky commenter!!!

AND ANOTHER NEWS FLASH! THE WASHINGTON POST PICKS THE WALNUT TREE AS ONE OF THE BEST CHRISTMAS BOOKS OF 2012!