Guest post written by The Sunflower House author Adriana Allegri
Adriana Allegri is a first-generation American whose parents lived in Europe before, during, and after World War II. She grew up on stories about how small acts of compassion saved lives. A former high school teacher and educational program administrator, Allegri also served as a writer/project manager for a leading data analytics company. Allegri spent fifteen years in the New York metro area but is happily relocated in Chandler, Arizona with her two ornery rescue cats. The Sunflower House is her first novel.
About The Sunflower House: In a sleepy German village, Allina Strauss’s life seems idyllic: she works at her uncle’s bookshop, makes strudel with her aunt, and spends weekends with her friends and fiancé. But it’s 1939, Adolf Hitler is Chancellor, and Allina’s family hides a terrifying secret―her birth mother was Jewish, making her a Mischling.
Is one character’s voice enough to sustain twenty years of research and the cherished dream of being published? For me, the answer is definitely yes.
When I look back on my path to publication, it all began with The Voice—a voice in my head.
More than twenty years ago, I was a high school teacher on summer break who woke from a nap one afternoon in tears. The voice in my head was clear and insistent—an intensely emotional plea to learn more about a mother’s secrets—so I ran to my computer and dashed out a few pages in stream-of-consciousness mode. It felt like a short story, although the story was unfinished.
The same thing happened a week or so later, only that time The Voice was about resolution, understanding, and healing between a mother and daughter.
I didn’t consider myself a writer at the time. I’d loved literature courses all through school and had dabbled in short stories and fan fiction for years, but never pursued writing seriously or thought of working on a novel. Instead, I took what I felt was the “safe route”—two degrees, one in marketing and the other in education.
There was no plot and few details in those initial, hastily written pages—only a box engraved with a swastika found in a mother’s bedroom closet, the secrets that box contained, and an estranged relationship that needed healing. Even so, The Voice was a commanding echo in my head—so much so that I’d wake up each morning and go to my computer to reread those first two chapters.
I decided to find a story worth telling and began my research into Nazi Germany. The Voice was helpful in matters of research, too. I’d feel it in my body while scanning various topics online. Interesting, The Voice would say, but not quite right. Keep going.
An article about Hochland Home and other Lebensborn facilities like it raised the hairs on my arms. That’s it, The Voice said. There’s your story.
Research began in earnest. There was less information available online back then, so I began with used bookstores. Research quickly became an obsession. When I’d tug on one thread, a dozen others would come undone. I learned to follow The Voice wherever it suggested. Weeks were spent on dozens of topics—everything from art to food to religion to architecture to Nazi philosophy and, of course, to the specifics of Heinrich Himmler’s ruthless eugenics program.
I wasn’t aware of the process as it unfolded, but writing always followed research—I never mixed the two. I’d research for a period of time (days, weeks, sometimes a month or more), and then when I was “filled up,” and when The Voice said I was ready, I’d set the books aside and cut loose with the writing. The chapters and scenes were certainly a result of all that research, but since I’m not a plotter, I was always flying blind—using a process involving music and movement to slip into character.
Early on, I learned that music was a tool to link between a character’s heart and mine. I’d pace my apartment to a song or songs (chosen intuitively, with help from The Voice) for 20 or so minutes. Sometimes I’d sing along or change the lyrics, other times I’d laugh or cry. Once I was filled with the necessary emotion, I’d sit down and let the writing flow.
The Voice is always loudest when my emotions are engaged. Writing isn’t a cerebral activity, as strange as that might sound. Instead, it begins with what I feel in my body when I wake up in the morning, typically around 3:00 a.m., before that first cup of coffee.
Within two years, I’d purchased more than a dozen research texts and gotten about 30% of a draft completed. This was frustrating, slow going. The Voice helped me decide that writing needed to take center stage. Some friends and family thought it was a wild idea to give up a 15-year career in education to move across the country from Arizona to the New York Metro area. My plan, if one could call it that, was to find a job in communications/writing, improve my level of skill, and be closer to the publishing industry. It was an ambitious plan, especially since the new career required a considerable adjustment period.
Don’t give up, The Voice would say, when I’d arrive home each night well after dark, exhausted after the two-hour commute from Jersey City. You’ll write this weekend. Allina’s story needs to be told. That voice never shut up. Even on days when I was too tired to write or research, it would nag at me. I’d pull out parts of the manuscript to reread or edit.
The first draft was complete within three years of my move to the east coast—five years after I’d begun writing—but query attempts revealed the manuscript needed work. Again, I trusted The Voice. Research, writing, even the courses I took and the critique groups I joined, appeared at the right time over the next decade. After ten more years of querying, The Voice helped me decide it was time to head back to Phoenix—a move my east coast friends thought was ill-advised. But I found my agent in Arizona, not New York, at a local conference I’d never have attended otherwise.
I realize this sequence of events will sound crazy to some. After more than twenty years, I’m still amazed at the journey and unsure about the psychological processes behind my writing. I try not to analyze them too much, as The Voice gets quiet when I do, which isn’t good for productivity. Looking back, I’m fairly certain the initial idea for this book had something to do with my own family’s history, which is riddled with secrets.
My mother’s name was Germana, and she was born in Italy in 1942. Her father, my Nonno Pietro, worked “in a factory in Germany” during the war—but no one in the family would give me any details about that. The only details I know for certain about my grandfather is that he returned from the war a violent, broken man, and that he died before I was born. My need to uncover the secrets in Allina’s family likely stems from the secrets in my own, along with the need to know more about our shared past during one of the darkest times in human history.
What I do know for sure is this: Those first two chapters written twenty-five years ago became the novel’s prologue and epilogue. Without that initial voice, the research it demanded, and its insistence to keep going, The Sunflower House would never be.
In the end, I’m very grateful I learned to trust The Voice.
