Letter from the Author Dear Reader, One day I was in an elevator and an elderly man named Sidney Reed said, “I bet I could tell you a story about the war that would make your hair stand on end.” The Prisoner’s Wife is inspired by the true story of love and courage he told me, a story so extraordinary that I could scarcely believe it when I first heard it. Mr. Reed told me he’d been in a Nazi prison camp where they’d sheltered a Czech woman disguised as a British soldier for the last six months of the war. I was hooked by the idea of this young woman pretending to be male, surrounded by hundreds of strange men, keeping totally silent, coping with deprivation, in constant fear of exposure—and all because she fell in love with a British soldier. Her astonishing bravery impressed me even more as I learned about the Arbeitskommando labor camps and the deadly Long March across Europe. My research took me to the POW camp in Poland and to the site of the labor camp in the Czech Republic, and I drove the five hundred–mile route of the Long March into Germany that Izzy and Bill were forced to endure. I wanted to write about love as well as horror—the love between a young couple and the loyalty between friends—and the joy of living as well as the fear of death. I wanted it to be a warning, but also a celebration of human endurance, generosity and kindness. I hope you and your readers will find Izzy’s story as heartrending and compelling as I did.
Maggie
Discussion Questions
1. How do you think Izzy’s mother reacted when she found out Izzy had run away with Bill? Can you imagine the conversation between Izzy’s mom and her old friend Mr. Novak? Was the priest right to marry Izzy and Bill? 2. Were Captain Meier (the Oily Captain) and Herr Weber trying to help Izzy when they offered to take her home, or was it a trick? Why would they want to help her? 3. Bill and Harry spent almost five years of their young lives as prisoners of war. What do you think would have been the hardest element of that? Were you surprised
that the Nazi regime used prisoners in labor camps as workers in mines, industry and agriculture? Do you think the Geneva Convention was right to allow that? 4. How did Izzy’s “method acting”—inhabiting the imaginary persona of Cousins—help her to survive? Do you think she could have survived without developing this way of controlling her impulsiveness and temper? Could she have done it if “Cousins” hadn’t been part of her character all along? 5. Izzy had to remain quiet for almost six months. Would you be able to do that? What would be the hardest part? Do you think remaining quiet would be harder than the hunger and physical exertion? Would Ralph and Max and Scotty
have confided in Izzy if she hadn’t been a quiet listener? 6. Where do you think Izzy finds the physical and emotional strength for the work in the quarry and the Long March? Could you have found the strength? Would Bill and Ralph and Max have been able to carry on if they hadn’t had Izzy? 7. Had you heard of the Long March across Europe before? Why do you think it’s such a forgotten element of the Second World War? Do you think Hitler intended to use the prisoners as human shields? 8. Do you think that the kindof events depicted in this novel are the inevitable end of the rise of a fascist regime? Could that happen any where in the world?
Ao C nversation with a M ggie rB ookes Tell us about The Prisoner’s Wife. What compelled you to write this story? The ex-journalist in me was hooked from the moment an elderly gentleman in a elevator said, “I bet I could tell you a story about the war that would make your hair stand on end.” His name was Sidney Reed, and he was right. I had that tingle, which meant I was onto the best story of my life. I was astonished that British POWs had sheltered a Czech girl in a Nazi prison camp for six months, hiding her in plain sight as a British soldier. But what fascinated me more was how it must have felt to her, being the only woman among thousands of men in a hostile and dangerous environment. The fact that she was risking her life for love made it all the more compelling.
Although The Prisoner’s Wife is based on a true story, the characters are fictionalized. Why did you choose to write Izabela and Bill as you did? I began with Izzy, thinking about what she must have been like in order to have the nerve to secretly marry and run away with the man she loved, leaving behind everything she knew.
She would have to be a risk-taker, a bit of a rebel, a person who followed her heart. To cope under the punishing daily deprivations of the camp and the Long March she would have to be courageous and physically strong. The more I wrote Izzy, the more I liked and respected her. Writing Bill was different; he’s more of a blend of lovely men I’ve known. A lot of Bill’s experiences are based on my dad’s wartime story. My dad was an East End boy who was captured at Tobruk and spent the rest of war as a prisoner of the Nazis.
What kind of research did you do to inform the novel? Did you learn anything particularly shocking about this dark period in history? I began, of course, by interviewing Sidney Reed and finding out everything he could remember about this astonishing story. Then I started to try to verify what he’d told me. At first I couldn’t find camp E166, but then I discovered that the British POW labor camps were numbered with “E” for English. I went to the Imperial War Museum and the National Archives in Kew. I read dozens of accounts of POW life—in books and online. I joined the Lamsdorf Association. I made particular use of the unpublished diary of a friend of my dad’s. I went to the Czech Republic visiting locations, drove up to Lamsdorf in Poland and then followed the route of the Long March five hundred miles across Poland and Germany.
A Conversation with aM ggie rB ookes
(Continued)
Though I think they may come as a surprise to many people, I already knew about the Arbeitskommando camps—which supplied labor to keep the mines, factories, quarries and agriculture of the Third Reich running—because my dad had been in one. But I’d never heard of the Long March, also known as the Death March. I was completely horrified by this, and couldn’t understand how it had faded out of common knowledge in just seventy-five years.
The Prisoner’s Wife is a story of struggle and survival during WWII, but ultimately, it is a love story. Do you think that Izabela and Bill’s romance would have been as striking during a different time? It’s the situation, with the Soviet army advancing and time running out, which propels them into running away together. I can’t imagine another set of circumstances in which a woman would have to disguise herself as a man, keeping perfectly silent, at daily risk of being exposed and shot as a spy, for six months. The love story is heightened by the risk of losing everything.
Which character was the most challenging to write? Why? I suppose it was most important to get Izzy right—to make her extraordinary situation believable. At first
I wrote her much more stroppy and difficult. It was only as time went on that she developed more depth and patriotism became part of her character. The most enjoyable characters to write were the friends—Scotty, Ralph and Max. I love each of them for their courage and their humanity.
You have previously published collections of poetry. Why did you choose to write this story in long-form prose? I have been writing stories and poems since I learned to read and write, and have published five poetry collections in the UK under my married name, Maggie Butt (a sixth is due soon). I have also written several novels before this; but this will be the first to be available in bookshops in the USA. I wrote Izzy’s story first as a long narrative poem, but then thought her extraordinary story deserved a bigger audience, as well as the time and space afforded by a novel.
What do you hope readers will take away from The Prisoner’s Wife? This story is a timely reminder of the inhumanity and horror that can result when fascism is allowed to thrive unchecked—and I think this could happen anywhere at any time. But despite the harrowing elements of the story, I hope readers will take away a message about courage, endurance, friendship and love under the most difficult of conditions.
About aM
ggie rB ookes
Maggie Brookes is a British ex-journalist and BBC television producer turned poet and novelist. She is an advisory
fellow for the Royal Literary Fund and also an associate
professor at Middlesex University in London, where she has taught creative writing since 1990. She lives in London and
Whitstable, Kent, and is married, with two adult daughters.
She has published five poetry collections in the UK under her
Photo by Lyn Gregory
married name, Maggie Butt.
MaggieBrookesNovelist MaggieBrookes.uk