Every book has its own unique beginning, which is often quite different from the final result.
Saving Rebecca began two years ago at a brunch with friends I meet once a year. As we sat in the garden, eating and chatting, among the guests was a lovely elderly woman I hadn’t met before. During the conversation, when the topic of my being an author who writes about World War II came up, she suddenly said to my surprise: “I was a child during World War II, in Italy and Yugoslavia.”
With my curiosity piqued, we started talking. It turned out she was eighty-five, though she looked much younger. She told me she was Jewish, born in Italy, and during the war, as a young girl, she and her mother had been transferred to a detention camp in Yugoslavia, guarded by Italian soldiers.
I was charmed by the things she remembered as a child. For example, she told me they would collect empty copper bullet casings to trade for food. She also recalled the screaming of German Stuka dive bombers swooping down from above. But what touched me most was when she mentioned a particular Italian soldier who would give her sugar cubes, the kind specially provided for soldiers to feed their horses, but he had shared them with her.
That was the moment I decided I wanted to write a story about the relationship between a soldier and a girl imprisoned in a concentration camp.
However, when I started thinking about the characters, I realized a six-year-old girl couldn’t narrate an entire book from her perspective; she was simply too young, and her language too simple. So I added her mother, Sarah, who began as a secondary character but became the main protagonist of the book – Sarah, who fights for the survival of her daughter Rebecca.
Yet I didn’t give up on the policeman in the story, who forms a special bond with Rebecca that I won’t reveal here.
Although the book changed significantly throughout the writing process, I’m very fond of the final result, and am excited to upload it for pre-order on Amazon.
I’ll be celebrating the launch in just over a month; a new book is always a reason to celebrate.
