A group of young women from Smith College risk their lives in France at the height of World War I in this sweeping novel based on a true story—a skillful blend of Call the Midwife and The Alice Network—from New York Times bestselling author Lauren Willig.
We chat to author Lauren Willig about her new novel Band of Sisters, writing, book recommendations, and more!
Hi, Lauren! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’ve always wanted to live in another century—or at least write as if I did! My grand plan after college was to get a PhD in history so I could write a sweeping epic about the English Civil War, but while I was avoiding my dissertation, I wound up writing a spoof about swashbuckling Napoleonic spies purely for my own amusement. Next thing I knew, a series was born about intrepid female spies thwarting Napoleon and shooting off clever one-liners. Since then, I’ve written twenty-one novels set in all sorts of different places and time periods, ranging from enslaved people fighting for freedom in colonial Barbados to murder and scandal in Gilded Age New York to my latest: Smith College grads in France in 1917 on the front lines of World War I.
I also picked up a JD at Harvard Law along the way, briefly juggling manuscripts and briefs while practicing as a litigator at a large New York law firm. These days, I write full time, when not wrangling a dinosaur obsessed preschooler and a highly opinionated first grader who have this odd idea that they should be fed and played with even if I’m in the middle of a chapter.
After the chaos that was 2020, have you set any goals for this year? If so, how are they going so far?
When you say after 2020… are we quite sure it’s really over? When I was in grad school, we used to talk about the long 18th Century, which stretched from 1688 to 1815. I’m pretty convinced we’re stuck in the long 2020. (I mean, Texas just iced over. We’re clearly living in Wacky Wednesday.) With two small children occasionally in school and more often not, the past twelve months have felt like a massive game of chutes and ladders. After spending way too much time agonizing over missed deadlines, my goal is to learn to be better at rolling with the punches and accepting life as it comes—at least as long as it stays eternal 2020! Also baking cinnamon rolls from scratch.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
E.L. Konigsburg’s A PROUD TASTE FOR SCARLET AND MINIVER! It’s a snarky, hilarious retelling of the life of that fearless medieval queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Someone gave it to me when I was six, and that was it. My fate was sealed. I wanted to be a medieval monarch—or, failing that, to write about the amazing women of history.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
When I was six, I announced to the world at large that I was going to be a writer when I grew up. Up until then, my career goals had been ballerina or princess, but since I can’t dance, and no one seemed prepared to offer me a small but wealthy principality, I decided to go with author. Of course, having made that announcement to my first grade class, I had to stick with it—and here I am!
Your new novel Band of Sisters releases on March 2nd 2021! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Forgotten American Heroines Bring Hope
Or: Not Your Usual War Story
Now, what can readers expect?
A side of World War I you never knew existed! In this true story of forgotten American heroines, a group of Smith College alums head off to France at the height of World War I to bring humanitarian aid to French villagers whose homes were destroyed by the invading German army. These determined women braved mud, bureaucracy, recalcitrant livestock (seriously, don’t ask them about the chickens), and German shells in their attempt to keep thousands of vulnerable women and children fed, clothed, and housed through the brutal winter of 1917-18—and in the process, they learned a great deal about themselves and the true nature of friendship.
What inspired you to write Band of Sisters?
I stumbled on an out of print memoir by one of the members of the group and immediately thought, wait, this has to be fiction. There couldn’t really be a group of Smithies in the Somme, right behind the front lines. But there were. And they did incredible things. I wrote it both because I fell in love with these women and their story—but also because I was appalled that I’d assumed they were fictional! We’ve inherited such a male-centric version of history that when women do show up in places we don’t expect them, we assume they couldn’t have been there. (In fact, there were a whole bunch of female-led relief missions in the Somme. We just never hear about them.) So I think it’s incredibly important to set the record right and write these brave women back into the historical narrative where they belong.
Were there any challenges you faced while writing? If so, how did you overcome them?
With coffee and the kindness of librarians! I had two major challenges writing this book. One was that there was a wealth of material in the archives at Smith College but I had a one year old and a five year old and there was no way to pick up and spend months in Northampton—so the super librarians of Smith College made the archives come to me. They digitized thousands of pages of material. I could not be more grateful to them. Librarians are my heroes.
Second challenge? While I was on deadline with this book, New York plunged into lockdown and I suddenly found myself locked in my apartment with my husband, my toddler, my kindergartner, and no childcare. That’s where coffee comes in. The first thing I did (after making sure we had a vast stockpile of Cheez-Its for the kids, and reading too many New York Times articles and panicking a lot) was order a Nespresso machine and a year’s supply of pods. For two hours every day, my husband would watch the kids and I would lock myself into my room with the Nespresso machine and the manuscript of BAND OF SISTERS. It’s amazing how much you can produce in two hours a day when driven by adrenaline and caffeine….
Can you tell us a bit about your research process?
I have to confess, my research process is the least organized ever—but somehow it works for me! Before I start writing, I read everything I can get my hands on: monographs, memoirs, diaries, newspaper articles—or, in the case of BAND OF SISTERS, thousands of pages of letters written home by the real women of the Smith College Relief Unit, telling about their daily dramas in real time. I sticky note bits I really want to come back to, but mostly, I just immerse myself in the sources and let it all sink in. I find this really helps me avoid the cardinal author sin of “info dump”. If it sticks with me by the time I start writing, then that detail really needs to be in the book; if I forgot about it, it probably wasn’t important anyway. The downside is that I spend a LOT of time scrabbling through the tottering piles of books and printouts next to my desk looking for that one line I was sure was right there.
Is there anything you hope readers take away from reading Band of Sisters?
There was one line from the real letters that jumped out at me, that I held onto through all the madness of last spring. When the Germans invaded in spring of 1918, the Smithies were part of a grim, heart-breaking evacuation, in which they saw families torn from their homes and terrible death and destruction. In the midst of all this, Elizabeth Bliss, class of 1908, wrote home, “it was marvelous to see how fine people are when all the external, superficial things are stripped away by a great emergency. I shall never forget all the beautiful as well as terrible things I saw.”
That’s what I want people to take away from Band of Sisters: how fine people can be. Every day, ordinary people rising to the circumstances to help others, just as the women of the Smith College Relief Unit did in the Somme. I hope readers find that as inspiring as I do.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
The best advice: if you’re writing, you’re a writer.
When I was working on my first book, and shyly mentioned that I was trying to be a writer to a charming, elderly lady who had been in publishing one way or another all her life, she looked at me and said, “My dear, if you’re writing, you’re a writer.” It’s amazing what a difference those little words make. So to everyone out there writing that first book? If you’re writing, you’re a writer.
The worst advice: any advice that pretends to tell you how you ought to be writing.
I strongly believe that everyone discovers her own process and what works for you may not work for the next person. I gnash my teeth when I hear people expounding to eager audiences about how you must write every day (I’ll write a hundred thousand words in six weeks and then nothing for two months) or how you must outline your books in advance (I think this only works for people whose characters do what they tell them—mine don’t). So to any aspiring writers out there: ignore anyone who tells you they’ve figured it out. You do you.
What’s next for you?
Right now, I’m working on a prequel to Band of Sisters (Smith II: the Resmithening!). Writing Band of Sisters, I was fascinated by the charismatic and eccentric real life founder of the Smith College Relief Unit, Harriet Boyd Hawes, who had broken barriers for women as an archaeologist after graduating from Smith in 1892—but along the way had gotten swept up in the Greco-Turkish War, going to the front as a nurse, where she was decorated by the Queen of Greece for her bravery. But what I really wondered was what made this ambitious archaeologist take a sudden break from her career the following year to go nurse troops during the Spanish American War.
Next thing I knew, I was writing a book about my own fictional version of Harriet Boyd Hawes: Betsy Hayes, a Smith grad who wants to be an archaeologist but whose life is changed forever by her experiences during the Greco-Turkish War and who redeems herself and discovers the woman she’s meant to be in the jungles of Cuba. It’s a coming of age story, a war story, and a story about what women can do. While researching this, I discovered some amazing—now forgotten!—stories about the heroic women who nursed with the Red Cross in Cuba and I’m so excited to bring their stories back to life in this book.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
Here are two books I adored this year (which is a high bar, since with the pandemic, I’ve been resorting a LOT to comfort reads, so when I really get into book I haven’t read fifteen times, it says something about that book!):
Susan Meissner’s THE NATURE OF FRAGILE THINGS, about an Irish immigrant who travels to California as a mail order bride right before the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. It’s part thriller, part historical fiction, part heroine’s journey, and totally riveting.
Marie Benedict’s THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE, which turns the spotlight from Poirot and Marple to the real life disappearance of the great mystery novelist. No one has ever figured out what happened to Agatha Christie during those missing eleven days, despite everyone from Scotland Yard to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle getting in on the action at the time—but Marie Benedict takes on the case, and will leave you totally convinced about what actually happened.
