September 17: Interview with author Amanda West Lewis

*citation below

With the 75th anniversary of the sinking of the S. S. City of Benares coming this September 17,  I reviewed yesterday September 17,  Ottawa author Amanda West Lewis' fictionalized account of its sinking.   Her book tells the story of three British children who find themselves on the requisitioned ship which was transporting ninety child evacuees to the safety of Canada.  Sadly, after secretly embarking from the shores of war-ravaged England, the S. S. City of Benares was torpedoed by a German U-boat on the night of September 17, 1940. Only thirteen children survived.

Amanda West Lewis began to research the incident after encountering a photograph at “The Children’s War” exhibit in London’s Imperial War Museum. Becoming inspired by the stories of the photographed children, she realized that this was a piece of history which had to be told.

Amanda West Lewis has graciously agreed to answer a number of questions for CanLit for LittleCanadians to share a bit more about her book and to help remember the tragedy of the S. S. City of Benares.

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HK: The disaster that occurred on September 17 was all the more poignant because the victims included child evacuees who were being sent to Canada to keep them safe during war.  What did you learn in your research about families who chose to evacuate  their children?

AWL:  It was a heartbreaking time for families. All parents want their children to be safe and healthy. But with little food, and bombs falling nightly, parents feared for their children’s survival. Many women who could afford to leave the cities went with their children to stay with relatives in the countryside. But people with low incomes had fewer choices. People in safe parts of the country offered to take in children. Over one million kids went to stay in farms in Wales. Then people overseas offered to take children in, and the government created the CORB plan. It was a risk, but people knew that the future lay in the survival of the children.

What a terrible dilemma it must have been: choose to keep your children with you in a war zone, or send them away to be raised by strangers in safety. The parents who chose to send their children away did so because they thought it was best. It was terribly painful, but they thought it was the only way to save their children’s lives. The colonies – Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa – were far away from the conflict and were seen as perhaps the only opportunity for a good life for the children.

I think about parents in Syria today, and in other war torn countries. If someone said, “We can take your children to safety”, I’m sure they would jump at the chance, even if it meant being separated. Parents want their children to survive, no matter the cost.



HK:  While being evacuated was a traumatic experience for some of your characters, say little John Snoad, others seemed to see it as an adventure, Terry even stating, “Who knew that war was going to be such fun?” (pg. 71)  What do you think affected how children perceived the process?

AWL:  I think a lot of it depended on the age of the child. Adolescents are ready for separation from their parents. We now know that the teenage brain is hard wired for risk taking and adventure, and this was the biggest adventure of their lives. I don’t think it is unusual for teenagers to have seen this as an opportunity. The teens were catapulted into young adulthood, with all of the fun and few of the responsibilities.

For younger children, it was different of course. Some children, like John Snoad, didn’t want any kind of separation from their families. John was clearly a boy who didn’t want to be away for even a night. Others, like Joyce Keeley, were homesick but able to be distracted by caring adults. She and the other 5 year olds weren’t aware of the time scale. A little child doesn’t understand the concept of going away for years. She had no inkling of the monumental change that was happening in her life. It was only later that the younger children began to realize that they weren’t going home.

I think it might have been hardest for the kids who were in the middle, the seven to eleven year olds. As adults, these evacuee children have talked about their sense of responsibility. They believed that they had to be strong for their parents. They felt guilty if they were sad. It was an enormous burden on that generation.

HK:  The children in your story encounter a number of crew and others significant to their experiences: Signalman Mayhew, Commodore Mackinnon, Cadets Haffner and Critchley, Rev. King, Miss Annie Ryan the stewardess.  Which of these were real people and which were based on real people?

AWL:  All of those characters were real people. They all had their part to play in the story. As much as possible, I tried to bring to life elements of their personality that I could glean from my research. Obviously I couldn’t track all of their movements, so what I have done is to construct a fiction based on what we know of their lives.



HK:  If anything speaks to the power of story-telling, it is Auntie Mary’s ability to keep the children’s attention by telling them a story in installments as they wait for their lifeboat to be rescued.  Did this actually happen and was it the story you tell in September 17?

AWL:  Yes it really happened. Everyone remembers Mary Cornish telling the boys Bulldog Drummond stories. I don’t know which ones she might have used as a base, but I read several of them in order to do the research and they all have pretty much the same formula. I imagined that Auntie Mary wouldn’t have known any of the stories very well. After all, she was a single woman, a music teacher, and probably not well versed in books for boys. But everyone knew of the Bulldog Drummond stories, so I allowed myself to weave bits and pieces together, fused with some of my own story telling. I tried to imagine Mary struggling to come up with exciting story lines. I think that as she became increasingly disoriented, her story telling probably became quite surreal.



HK:  Much wiritng has been done about disasters and those who’ve survived them and those who did not.  Why do you think these stories are so compelling for young readers?

AWL:  That’s a really good question. Obviously as I was writing the book I was thinking about how young readers are fascinated by Titanic stories. I think it has to do with an innate desire for risk and adventure. People have a physical response when they read. It’s not dissimilar to actually living through the events, and it turns out that we all like to have our adrenaline stimulated! It makes us feel alive.

I think that young people can read the book and put themselves into the story. They can be excited and scared in the safety of an armchair. And I hope they can be moved by how each character deals with survival and loss.

HK:  If there is an image you keep from the diaster as told in September 17 (not a photograph that you saw), what is it?

AWL:  There are three images that stay in my mind all of the time. They’re based in fact, but I have augmented reality to give a moment of recognition to a couple of the children who didn’t survive.

One image is of Connie Grimmond on the deck with her brothers and sisters. Everyone who survived talked about Connie and how wonderful she was with her siblings. They were a working class family and very, very poor, but Connie was a wonderful “little mother” and made sure that her sisters and brothers were clean and well mannered. I’ve invented a moment for her on the deck holding them, with her arms around them in all of the chaos. I’d like to think she was able to do that in her last moments before getting on the lifeboat. She went down with Lifeboat #8.

Another image is of Joyce Keeley. It is hard not to love Joyce. I have given her a moment with Bess when the torpedo first hits. Later Sonya sees a small child on the deck, holding a large teddy bear. That’s Joyce. I imagined her alone, and bewildered, but with her teddy.

But the lasting image is entirely true and not fictionalized. It’s the image of Ken Sparks waving his shirt so that the pilot could see Lifeboat 12. When I read Ken’s story, I knew that I wanted people to know about him. I think he must have been one of those remarkable thirteen-year-old boys who have an amazing zest for living. I would have loved to have met him.

Sincere gratitude to author Amanda West Lewis for answering my questions 

and to publicist Winston Stilwell for arranging this interview and 

providing a review copy of September 17.

Thank you

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* Images retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2112768/Torpedoed-clutched-teddies-The-harrowing-story-Nazis-sunk-ship-carrying-90-children-Blitz-America.html and http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/15/benares-sunk-war-81-children-dead  on September 7, 2015.

September 17

by Amanda West Lewis

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-507-3

313 pp.

Ages 12+

2013

Every disaster is heart-breaking: for the fears endured, the injuries incurred, the lives lost, the memories wrought.  But imagine a disaster that involves the loss of children’s lives and specifically children whose families had chosen to send them away to safety, a safety never realized.  The heart-break is beyond imagination.

Such is the premise upon which Ottawa author Amanda West Lewis has based her novel September 17.  The story recounts the torpedoing on September 17, 1940 of the S. S. City of Benares, a ship transporting child evacuees from war-torn England to the safety of North America.  Sadly that ship never arrives on our shores.

Though September 17 is told in third person narration, it focuses on the experiences of three specific children:  Bess Walder, 14; Ken Sparks, 13; and Sonia Bech, 11.  Although they will all face the same disaster, their stories are very different.

Bess and Ken are only two of the 90 child evacuees–some frightened, some eager, some with siblings, many alone–aboard the S. S. City of Benares.  Bess Walder is eager to go have an adventure in Canada and resume her education–war does tend to send schooling off track– and perhaps even get a university degree so she may pursue teaching after the war.  Not surprising she suggests to her parents that she and her younger brother Louis be evacuated courtesy of the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB),  hopeful of staying with their mother’s aunt in Winnipeg.

Ken Sparks of London, also has a sense of adventure, determined to be a war correspondent, and wearing his father’s far-too-large but good overcoat, he sets off, destined for Edmonton.

In addition to the evacuees and their chaperones, there are other guests aboard, including the three Bech children who are travelling with their mother to stay with cousins in Montreal.  

While the child evacuees are amazed by the food offered to them and the opportunities for play and activities such as drawing, they never forget the dangers explicit to their travels.  Before they leave dock on September 13, the harbour is swept for mines, and there are extensive drills involving kapok vests and lifeboats.  The ship itself is part of an 18-ship convoy  three miles wide which provides protection but also slows down their progress.  

By the time September 17 rolls around, the S. S. City of Benares,  believed to be in neutral waters and safe, is without its accompanying destroyer and corvette escorts. And at 10:03 p.m., the first explosion, a torpedo from a German U-boat, hits. By 10:33 p.m., the ship is almost vertical. While some make it into lifeboats–though not necessarily as practised–others end up on wooden rafts and many people, including Bess, find themselves in the water.

The fates of the children, evacuees and not, and all aboard the S. S. City of Benares is revealed by Amanda West Lewis with clarity and feeling, allowing readers to understand the tragedy from multiple perspectives.  Since the numbers are staggering –77 of 90 child evacuees died, as did 6 of 10 escorts, 51 of 91 paying passengers and 23 of 49 crew–the sinking of the S. S. City of Benares is an overwhelming tragedy.  The few miracles, and there truly are several, will astound readers and provide the sliver of hope that not all was lost.  

It is an astonishing story and one that Amanda West Lewis tells extraordinarily well.  It is alive and arresting, sharing as many perspectives as possible, while providing deeper looks into the genuine experiences of several children.  We learn what they anticipated, what they feared, what they endured, and what happened to them.  It is an extraordinary glimpse into a perhaps neglected part of World War II history, and one that needs to be commemorated all the more on September 17 with September 17 the book.

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Check back tomorrow when I will post a Q & A with author Amanda West Lewis about her book September 17 and about the tragedy that garnered her attention and pen.

Fight for Power: The Rule of Three, Book 2

by Eric Walters

Razorbill

978- 0-670-06706-0

352 pp.

Ages 12-18

January, 2015

When Eric Walters left readers at the end of The Rule of Three (Razorbill, 2014), the community of Eden Mills was managing rather well in the aftermath of a major power outage which affected all electrically-powered and digital devices. Under the leadership of Adam Daley's police captain mom and their elderly neighbour Herb Campbell who was possibly a former spy, and with the support of a multitude of residents with an assortment of skills, the community has organized into a relatively efficient entity with the mandate of survival.  They have food, water, communications, medical care, engineering, transportation, weapons, and a burgeoning societal structure that is learning to tame the chaos.  But, The Rule of Three left readers and community on the brink of an attack by the residents of a militarized compound, heading to the bridge that would lead to Eden Mills.

The attack is thwarted but, even though almost 500 persons from the compound are killed, leaving only about 100 left behind, the neighbourhood knows it is still vulnerable.  The decision to counter-attack, using intel from a captured compound soldier, Quinn, leads them to 47 imprisoned women and children whom Brett, cop and team leader, almost murdered in his zealousness to launch an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade).  Two dilemmas are revealed by that incident: the wisdom (or not) of bringing others into the community already taxed with limited resources, and Brett's bravado and insistence on offensive measures.  In fact, with reports of well-armed roving gangs becoming more violent, Brett and a group of nine other young men begin patrolling outside the walls of the neighbourhood on a nightly basis.

The realization that,

We need to do more than just survive.  We have to keep being human. (pg. 266)

becomes an important focus for Adam and others and a theme for Fight for Power.  Is living worth it if you know your actions have caused the death of others or are devoid of charity? How does power manifest itself:  in strength, in winning, in happiness, in surviving?  Eric Walters does a masterful job of depicting the chaos of this new world and those who fight for power. As the catch line on the book cover suggests, The enemy is everywhere, including within, so Herb is right when he declares over and over again, "Pray for the best, prepare for the worst." (pg. 127)

Fight for Power will take the reader from horrific chaos, to moments of calm, to occasional jubilation, and even to devastating loss.  I can only advise you to hold fast because the ride is a bumpy one but the journey that Eric Walters takes us on is worth it.

Unspeakable: Book Launch (Kanata)

Join

Caroline Pignat

author of historical fiction

Greener Grass (Red Deer Press, 2008)

Wild Geese (Red Deer Press, 2010)

Timber Wolf (Red Deer Press, 2011)

for the launch of her newest young adult novel

Unspeakable

Razorbill Canada

978-0143187554

288 pp.

Ages 12+

on 

Saturday, May 31, 2014

2-5 p.m.

at

D'arcy McGee's

655 Terry Fox Dr.

 Kanata, Ontario

 Featuring a reading by the author, books for sale, and  live music. 

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The following information about Unspeakable comes from Caroline Pignat's website at http://www.carolinepignat.com/unspeakable.html

"Working as a stewardess aboard the Empress of Ireland allows Ellie Ryan to forget about why she has been banished from the family home, why her great aunt ultimately had to find her this job. On her second voyage, Ellie finds herself drawn to the solitary fire stoker who stands by the ship's rail late at night, often writing in a journal."

"Based on the true story of the sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland in May 1914, a disaster that lost more passengers' lives than Titanic, Unspeakable will be published in time to mark the 100th anniversary of this tragedy. "

The Rule of Three

by Eric Walters

Razorbill

978-0-670-06705-3

405 pp.

Ages 12-18

January, 2014

While the Eden Mills of Eric Walters' The Rule of Three becomes a dystopian world, it is not a futuristic community under a totalitarian or an environmentally-degraded one.  It's the suburban neighbourhoods so many of us live in. The story begins in a high school with teens desperate to complete an assignment, a typical event in any high school in Canada or the US today.  But everything changes when the power goes out.  Not just the electricity that ultimately provides heat, light, water, sewage, refrigeration, and the countless amenities of our power-dependent lives, but also computerized devices like cell phones, lap tops, cars, etc. The unpleasantness of a dystopia is not immediately evident, but it's coming.

For Adam Daley and his family, the onset of the power outage doesn't create as much chaos as it does for the majority of the population.   Because Adam's 1970's Omega doesn't rely on fancy electronics, they have one of the few functioning vehicles around.  Mom is a police captain who works in the nearly precinct, so not only is she close to home, she commands some respect among those who may be acting less than nobly.  Dad is a pilot for Delta and was safely grounded in Chicago (not in the air) when all devices stopped working, and had been helping Adam, who is learning to fly, to build an ultralight plane in their garage.  Probably most significant is the close relationship the Daley family has with their elderly neighbour, Herb Campbell, whose former governmental job that took him around the world (Adam wonders if he was a spy) has him well-prepared for any disaster and skilled in diffusing dangerous situations.

As people become more desperate for food and water, and fearful for their families, Herb recognizes that, "We have to become increasingly more organized as the world becomes more disorganized." (pg. 141) In addition to patrols and checkpoints and a credit system to prevent further looting,  they conduct a census to determine what skills are already within the community.  Moreover, they convince the Petersons, the parents of the girl that Adam is crushing on, to transport all their farming equipment and animals to Eden Mills to share their knowledge of farming, building wells, etc. with them.

While occasional forays in the ultralight reveal much destruction and the establishment of other communities, the group works to build up their own community, establish better defense strategies, and attempt to deal with potential allies and enemies.  Sometimes mistakes, even fatal ones, are made as they learn what works and doesn't work, but they develop, amend and create solutions that might help them all survive yet another day.

The consummate author of engaging books for young readers, Eric Walters will have no difficulty grabbing fans of adventure, survival, dystopian or speculative fiction with The Rule of Three and its series. (There are sequels coming, as the last line in the book suggests.) Strangely, Eric Walters does not need to rely on supernatural elements or demand that readers completely deny their common sense.  Every and any reader could place themselves in the role of Adam, Lori, or another character, and recognize that their reactions are very honest and real.  There are the know-it-alls, the aggressors, the innocents, the ignorant, the leaders and the followers.  There are those you'll despise, those for whom you'll cheer and those you'll want as your neighbours.  Herb calls it well when he declares that, "Crisis doesn't change people; it reveals them." (pg. 325) In The Rule of Three, Eric Walters reveals us to ourselves in a time of crisis, albeit with names of Adam, Herb, Brett, Ernie, Howie and Stan, and we may not always like what we see.  Luckily, though The Rule of Three seems very real, it's only fiction. Right?