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Bobbed Hair and Bravery

7/18/2021

The main character in my next book, A Blaze of Poppies, is a feisty little woman with more determination than muscle, though she has plenty of that, too. Agnes Day is a third-generation rancher in the dry desert of southwestern New Mexico. She stands barely five feet tall, but she’s adept enough on horseback to rope a steer and bring it down. The fifth daughter in a family that has no sons, she is determined to follow her father and keep the Sunrise Ranch going.

When I write, I amass pictures to help me envision my characters and settings. My inspiration for Agnes Day is a contemporary of hers, an inspiring, real woman named Mabel Strickland. Mabel, who was born in Walla Walla, Washington, in January 1897, learned to ride the same time she was learning to walk. Standing just over five feet tall, she was slim, but muscular enough to throw a 345-pound calf to the ground and pin its flailing legs, a feat that even male cowboys find difficult. She started her riding career when she was only fifteen years old. By 1916, Mabel was competing in rodeos. She continued to compete – and win – for 26 years.

Like Mabel, Agnes Day wears her hair bobbed. One of her suitors, trying to gain her favor says “Bobbed hair like yours is very fashionable now, though. I saw a lot of it on the girls in Boston, where Harvard is. You would fit right in.” Agnes responds with ““I don’t care a continental about fashion, and I don’t care about fitting in,” then watches with satisfaction as the young man blushes. Agnes’ mother then says that “Our Agnes is a practical girl. She bobbed her hair so it won’t get into her eyes when she’s riding.”

My grandmother (left) and her sister with their new, modern bobs.

While neither a rancher nor a rodeo rider, my own grandmother showed some bravery by getting the same haircut that Mabel Strickland and Agnes Day had. The family story is that she and her sister quietly went into their father’s room when he was sleeping and asked if they could get their hair cut. In his half-asleep state, he assented. The girls then went out and got their hair bobbed, being the first women in Deshler, Nebraska to do so. The family was not happy, but my grandmother and her sister started a trend, and soon many of the girls in town had bobbed hair.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a native New Mexican who lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque. A Blaze of Poppies will be published in October 2021, and is available for preorder here.
To see more images related to this story, visit her Pinterest page.

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The best place in America to Look back at World War I

6/29/2015

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Last month I had the joy of visiting the National WWI Museum and Liberty Memorial in Kansas City. If you are at all interested in the war that changed the world a hundred years ago, this is the place to visit in America.

The Liberty Memorial was created in the 1920's through the subscription of Kansas City's citizens. Perched high on a grassy hill, this Beaux Arts and Egyptian Revival memorial consists of a 266 ft tower topped by four 40 foot tall figures who are the Guardian Spirits. Each figure holds a sword. They represent Honor, Courage, Patriotism and Sacrifice.

Two sphinxes flank the tower. "Memory" faces east, towards the battlefields of France. "Future" faces west. Both shield their eyes with their wings: one hiding from the horrors of war, the other symbolizing that the future is unknown and unseen.

Two halls face toward the tower. One is Memory Hall, which has some of the most beautiful friezes I have ever seen. Exhibit hall houses some of the collection of the museum, which rests underground, beneath the Memorial.

Liberty Memorial is noble and somber. It is epic in scale. But what rests beneath it in the museum is even more awe-inspiring.

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Saving the Children

12/2/2014

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Thanks to The Diary of Anne Frank, which is taught in middle and high schools throughout the United States, just about everyone knows that Jewish children in the Netherlands were hidden away from the Nazis during World War II.

Hidden Like Anne Frank make it evident that hiding children away was more common than some of us might have imagined. This book, by Netherlanders Marcel Prinz and Peter Henk and translated into English by Laura Watkinson, allows 14 people to pass on their experiences as Jewish children in the Netherlands during World War II. Now adults, each narrator recounts being moved from house to house and city to city. Some were kept by family members and relatives. Others, by complete strangers. They endured boredom and terror, hunger and cramped quarters. Some were just three or four years old. Others were teenagers. But they survived because of a secret network of brave people who were determined to protect them.

Less well known or understood by Americans is the story of Jewish children in France. One of the reasons for this was that the situation in France was much more complex than in the Netherlands.

France was a divided nation during World War II. After France surrendered to Germans on June 24, 1940, three fifths of France, including Northern France and the entire French Atlantic Coast, was occupied by the German army.

Henri Philippe Pétain, a World War I General who had become a national hero, helped form a goverment commonly known as Vichy France in the remaining two fifths of French territory which was called the Southern Zone.

The senior leaders of the Vichy goverment, in the hopes of preserving a modicum of French sovereignty, turned a blind eye to the plunder of French resources and the sending of French forced labor to Nazi Germany. They also allowed and sometimes aided anti-semite parties in the concentration and persecution of Jews, particularly those of foreign citizenship. Vichy France sent 76,000 Jews to death camps. 11,000 of them were children.

Not all Frenchmen agreed with the anti-semite policies of the Vichy regime or their Nazi allies. The Children of Chabannes tells the story of Felix Chevrier, who housed Jewish children, many of them German or Polish by birth, in Chateau Chabannes, his school in Chabannes, Creuse. In a series of interviews, these children, now adults, speak about how Chevrier integrated them into classes with the local children. They believe that the rigorous athletic programs he developed were intended to strengthen them for the physical and mental hardships that they would face if ever sent to Drancy, the closest Jewish Concentration Camp, or to Germany.

When the Germans occupied the Southern Zone in November 1942, the Chateau began dispersing children to protect them from round-up. When the round-ups came, Chevrier was able to stall and obfuscate records. His deceit and planning saved the lives of hundreds of children.

My novel, Code: Elephants on the Moon, takes place in Normandy during World War II. Normandy was part of Occupied France. As such, then Germans had the ability to round up all Jews, even those who were French citizens.

As in the Netherlands and elsewhere, not everyone agreed with this policy. Many Frenchmen, including the fictional ones in my novel, hid their Jewish neighbors or helped them establish false identities or helped smuggle them out of the country. It is estimated that three-quarters of France's Jewish population survived the war because of the efforts of others.

However, just as not all stories of children hidden in the Netherlands end happily (Anne Frank's, for instance), not all French stories conclude with hundreds of children saved by brave and defiant action.

Steven Schnur's The Shadow Children tells the fictional story of Etienne, an eleven year old boy who visits his grandfather during post WWII in the French village of Mount Brulant.

When Etienne sees the ghosts of hundreds of starving, emaciated, raggedy, forlorn children hiding in the woods, he asks his grandfather and other adults about them. Eventually he learns the sad, tragic, terrible truth: Jewish children who were sent into the country to seek refuge arrived in Mount Brulant, where the people helped them for a time. Yet, when the Nazis hunted the children down, the townspeople allowed the Nazis to herd them into trains and ship them to concentration camps.

The true focus of the story in neither Etienne nor the children, but the grief and guilt of the townspeople, who buckled under the threats of the the Nazis. While this story may be fiction, many Frenchmen feel grief and guilt when recounting this dark period in their history.

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Judging a Book by its cover: Part Two

11/20/2014

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L.M. Elliott's Under a War-Torn Sky is one of my favorite novels. It is a fast-paced read that really excites middle school boys who are otherwise reluctant readers. I used it several times when I was a reading intervention teacher, both as a class read and as an individual recommendation, and I've never had a boy not enjoy it.

The story is about Henry Forester, a young man flying a B-24 in World War II. When his plane is shot down and he is trapped behind enemy lines, kind French citizens, some who are members of the Resistance and some who are just sympathetic to a frightened young man, help him to escape and return home via Switzerland and a treacherous route over the Pyrennes.

As one might expect, there are several plot elements in common between Under a War-Torn Sky and Code: Elephants on the Moon. My French girl, Eponine, has a very different life from the French girl who helps Elliott's Henry, but the both share some of the same opinions about the callow young aviators they help rescue.

Some of the questions I was asked when it came time for me to commision the cover for Code: Elephants on the Moon was if there were any other books whose subject or theme were like mine. Could I suggest any covers that looked like what I wanted my own cover to look like?

I immediately thought of Under a War-Torn Sky. I googled it to find cover images and was surprised to find not just the one I was familiar with, but three covers.

I

I sent all three of these images to the artist who created my cover. As you can tell, mine came out very different than any of these. This isn't surprising, since the focus of the two books is different. My aviator plays just a small part in my plot, while he is the main character in Elliott's.

I'm curious: which of these covers attracts your attention? Based on the very sketchy synopsis I've given you, which one best expresses the story? Would you buy any of these three books?

Knowing how you think might influence me when it's time to commission my next cover!

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Code Name: Cover

7/21/2014

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Everyone knows the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover." Everyone also knows that everyone does exactly that. Mark Coker, the guy behind Smashwords, one of the premier sites for self-pubed ebooks, says "your cover image is the first impression you make on a prospective reader. A great cover image makes a promise to the reader. It tells the reader, “I’m the book you’re looking for.”

So how do you decide what images will make readers decide that your book is the one they're looking for? Tricky question.

Just how tricky this question is to answer becomes obvious when you look at the five different covers that have graced Elizabeth Wein's new YA historical fiction Code Name Verity. Wein's novel is about what happens to two women whose plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France in 1943, and it's told in first person through the writings of the two women. The cover on the left pictures a plane trailing blood-red smoke as it goes down, a dark silhouette of a woman, and a rose, and I can say without giving too much away that all three images are appropriate, although I am not enough of an airplane enthusiast to tell you if the plane on the cover is the right kind or not. The next cover shows two women's arms bound together, and while it does show how the two characters are emotionally bound to one another, I first wondered if this novel was about lesbian lovers or bondage rituals. The middle cover shows two old bicycles against a stone wall, with bombers in the background and is, like the first cover, appropriate although not as mysterious or dark as the first cover. The remaining two covers have women's faces and the suggestion of imprisonment: one with high strung barbed wire and the other with the shadow of fencing. One features a red gash across the woman's face; the other, the bombers again. Two of the women seem to have dark hair and eyes. The third looks like a blue-eyed blonde, which is what the woman whose code name was Verity was.

I've added a little more about this book to my web page on Code: Elephants on the Moon, in the for further reading section.

I first came across this novel when I was looking specifically for cover ideas for Code: Elephants on the Moon, and at that point the only cover I saw was the center one. I liked the bombers and, since bombers also feature in my novel, I decided to include them in my cover design.

So what do you think? If you had to judge Code Name Verity by its cover, which would you choose?

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Religion in Nazi Germany

6/18/2014

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If you go on the internet and try to research the relationship between the Nazi State and religion you will get opinions that are all over the board. Some people are still angry about what they view as the collaboration between church and state in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories. Others are equally adamant about the Church’s opposition to the Nazis.

            In 1933, almost all of the 60 million people living in Germany were Christian. About 20 million people belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. Protestant churches had about 40 million members, most of them members of the German Evangelical Church, an association of 28 regional churches that that included Lutheran, Reformed, and United Protestant churches. Smaller so-called "free" Protestant churches, such as Methodist and Baptist churches also existed, as well as a small representation of Mormon, Jehovah Witness and Seventh Day Adventist Churches. Less than 1% of the total population of the country was Jewish.

            It’s pretty clear that, at least at first, many Protestants welcomed the rise of Nazism and were willing to cooperate with it. They believed the Nazi Party affirmed traditional morals and family values and would protect them from communism. The German Evangelical Church, which had long considered itself to be one of the pillars of German culture and society, espoused a theologically grounded tradition of loyalty to the state. By the 1930s, a movement within the German Evangelical Church called the Deutsche Christen, or "German Christians" embraced many of the nationalistic and racial aspects of Nazi ideology.   It should come as no surprise, then, that many were persuaded by the statement on “positive Christianity” in Article 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform that the Nazis believed in freedom of religion:

"We demand the freedom of all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not jeopardize the state's existence or conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the Germanic race. The Party as such upholds the point of view of a positive Christianity without tying itself confessionally to any one confession. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit at home and abroad and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only be achieved from within on the basis of the common good before individual good."

Once the Nazis came to power, the German Evangelical Church began to change. In 1936 it was renamed the National Reich Church. A member of the Nazi party was elected as its Bishop and non-Aryan ministers were suspended.   Church members were said to have "the Swastika on their chest and the Cross in their heart."

One of the Nazi Government’s most effective ways of corrupting religion was through the indoctrination of children. All children had grown up with the Hitler Youth Movement, which had been created in the 1920's and by 1936 boasted 4 million members, boys and girls ages 10 through 18. At first, attendance was voluntary. However, Hitler Youth Meetings were held on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings, times which interfered with most church activities, so children had to choose, a circumstance explored in Michael Terrell’s based-on-real-life novel Brothers in Valor. Later, attendance in the Youth Movement became compulsory and competing activities, such as Boy Scouts and church-based programs, became illegal. Children indoctrinated by the Nazi education program and Hitler Youth were encouraged to inform their teachers if their parents, priests or pastors made disparaging comments about Hitler.

Not everyone in Germany was happy to let the Nazis have so much control of religion. The Kreisau Circle, a group of churchmen, scholars and politicians, was one of the most famous groups to oppose Hitler. Rather than plan active resistance against the Nazi government, the Kreisau Circle planned for Germany’s future. When the Gestapo learned of the organization and rounded up and executed its members.

There was also dissent within the National Reich Church. In 1934 Martin Niemöller convinced 6,000 of the 8,000 ministers in the National Reich Church to split off and form The Confessing Church. Its founding document, the Barmen Confession of Faith, declared that the church's allegiance was to God and scripture, not a worldly Führer. The Nazis reacted strongly to this challenge. Niemöller himself was arrested in 1937 and sent to Dachau, then Sachsenhausen. He wasn’t released until 1945. Around 800 other ministers were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

The leaders of the Catholic Church were initially more suspicious of Nazism than their Protestant counterparts. Rabid anti-Catholicism of figures such as Alfred Rosenberg, a leading Nazi ideologue during the Nazi rise to power, raised early concerns among Catholic leaders in Germany and at the Vatican. Some bishops even prohibited their parishioners from joining the Nazi Party. However, in 1933 Hitler signed an accord with the Pope in which he promised full religious freedom for the Church, which he described as the “foundation” for German values. The Pope responded by promising that he wouldn’t interfere in political matters. Soon after, the Nazis began closing Catholic churches and monasteries. Like the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Youth Organization was abolished. Around 700 priests were arrested and sent to the concentration camps for what the government called “oppositional activities”.

Other, smaller churches suffered under Nazi persecution as well. The Mormons were forced to give up their extensive youth programs and were monitored for anti-German sentiments because of their connections with America. About one-third of Jehovah Witnesses were killed in concentration camps because their pacifist stand made them refuse to serve in the German army. The Salvation Army, The Christian Saints and The Seventh Day Adventist Church disappeared from Germany during the Nazi regime.

The battle between church and state was not only fought in Germany. Once its forces were defeated, France also fell under the influence of the Nazi Party. It was divided into two zones, one of which was occupied by the German army. The Vichy Government, which was sympathetic to the German cause, controlled the other half of France. Its leader, an aging World War I hero named General Petain, who declared that he had a moral necessity to free France from decadence and corruption. With sanctions from the Catholic Church and the Nazi Party, he purged the political Left and demoted Jews, communists and Freemasons to second class citizens and enemies of the state. As in Germany, his task was made easier by the indoctrination of the young in schools and social programs. By 1942, internment camps throughout France were filled with Jews and others considered to be morally subversive to French culture.

The Nazi State used religion in its war for the hearts and minds of the German people and the world. They created a church that was racist and anti-Semitic, and they persecuted anyone who chose to defy or deny their vision. And yet, through all the persecution, people of conscience representing every denomination strived to rescue Jews and other groups which the Nazi state considered undesirable. In both Germany and France there were individuals who fought, either openly or quietly, to countermand the government and its policies. God bless those people, and those who continue to fight for truth and love amid the chaos of politics and prejudice.

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Forward>>

Bobbed Hair and Bravery

The best place in America to Look back at World War I

Saving the Children

Judging a Book by its cover: Part Two

Tell me what you think about these covers

Code Name: Cover

Judging Code Name Verity's cover

Religion in Nazi Germany

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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