They did not want to be pictured or named. Over fifty years later, the women were still ashamed and spoke with their backs to the camera. I watched documentaries that featured women who had had their heads shaved. At the Quai Branley Museum, I went to an exhibit on hair, which included World War II footage, and read several works about women who had their heads shaved in public during the war. I spent time the Memorial de la Shoah, France’s Holocaust Museum and Archive Center, to read ‘crow letters’ and to read about the treatment of Jewish people during the war. I read personal accounts of French prisoners of war in Germany, as well as their letters to family members.

I read several books on the history of World War II as well as memoirs written by women who played an active role. It was fascinating to read about the concerns of the time, to see the ads for fashion, and to see how people coped during a stressful, difficult time when no one was certain what would happen. At the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, I went through two years of the Library Journal magazine and the Paris edition of the New York Herald. While writing, I spent several years examining photos and reading. What was the research process like for this book? The French governmental program for English speakers to teach in France still exists. When colleagues told me the incredible story of the librarians who defied the Nazi “Library Protector” in order to deliver books to Jewish readers, I knew the story was a novel and sat down to write it. I eventually got a job there as the programs manager. I began to volunteer at the American Library in Paris, leading creative writing workshops for teens. I went to Paris to work as a teaching assistant in a French school “for a year,” and ended up staying for over a decade. Tell us about your background and what led you to write this book. I’m grateful for the librarians and institutions that make knowledge available to us, no matter where we are. It is amazing how much of our history is accessible. I bought photos of Miss Reeder and the Library on eBay. I also tracked down the children, grandchildren, and nephews of my real-life characters through Twitter, Facebook, and online phone directories. I am thankful to JSTOR and the American Library Association for sharing documents and making my research possible. You’d learn that I obsessively googled Dorothy Reeder, the Directress of the American Library in Paris, as well as her colleagues! We are so lucky that archivists and librarians add new documents to online collections every day so that we are able to research our history. If I looked at your internet history, what would I learn about you?

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