I look forward to hearing from you with your thoughts.
Perhaps you and the family could visit when the weather improves? Much as I love Christmastime here, I do look forward to the blooming of the chestnut trees on the Champs-Élysées. After all, who can deny the beauty of Paris in the spring?
With all best wishes,
Delphine
THE END
Acknowledgments
Though writing can be a lonely process, no book is complete without the help of many. It really is a huge team effort and we are so grateful to everyone involved in making Last Christmas in Paris so special, especially our wonderful editor, Lucia Macro, who shared our excitement and belief in this book from the very beginning, and took a huge leap of faith in letting us tackle this—seemingly impossible—project!
Huge thanks to the team at William Morrow: our publisher Liate Stehlik, Molly Waxman, Jennifer Hart, Michelle Podberezniak, Carolyn Coons, and everyone involved in cover design, interior design, copyediting, and production.
To our terrifically talented agent, Michelle Brower, who connected the two of us several years ago, and who said YES to this idea without a moment’s hesitation. Thank you for your wisdom and passion, and for first suggesting the idea for Tom’s “Paris” scenes, which made this book so much more. In fact, you make all of our projects so much more.
Thank you, also, to our tireless rights agent, Chelsey Heller, for bringing our words to readers around the world.
Huge thanks to early readers, especially Hazel’s sister, Helen Plaskitt, and Heather’s good friend and fellow author, Kris Waldherr. Additional thanks to Brien Brown for helping with a few important historical details. And as always, huge thanks to our families and friends, for their continued support and belief in us.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Authors
* * *
Meet Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb
About the Book
* * *
Reading Group Questions
A Love Letter to Letters
Researching the Great War
Interesting Facts About the Great War
Lord Kitchener’s Guidance to British Troops
A Note from Hazel to Heather
A Note from Heather to Hazel
About the Authors
Meet Hazel Gaynor
HAZEL GAYNOR is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of A Memory of Violets and The Girl Who Came Home, for which she received the 2015 Romantic Novelists’ Association Historical Romantic Novel of the Year award. Her third novel, The Girl from The Savoy, was an Irish Times and Globe & Mail (Canada) bestseller, and was shortlisted for the 2016 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards Popular Fiction Book of the Year.
Hazel was selected by Library Journal as one of Ten Big Breakout Authors for 2015, and her work has been translated into several languages.
Originally from Yorkshire, England, Hazel now lives in Ireland.
Meet Heather Webb
HEATHER WEBB taught high school for a decade before following the Muse to fiction. Her historical novels Becoming Josephine, Rodin’s Lover, and Fall of Poppies have received national starred reviews, and in 2015, Rodin’s Lover was chosen as a Goodreads Top Pick. To date, her books have been translated to many languages worldwide. When not writing, Heather flexes her foodie skills, geeks out on pop culture and history, or looks for excuses to head to the other side of the world. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society and lives in New England with her family, and one feisty rabbit.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
About the Book
Reading Group Questions
1.Women’s roles changed dramatically through the course of WWI. What are your thoughts about Evie’s place in the war, at home, and in France? Which factors came into play to cause these changes?
2.How did WWI affect societal structures and values? Are the effects still felt today?
3.Newspapers were the main source of information for the public in WWI. How do you feel about the War Office encouraging positive messages through propaganda while also suppressing the worst details of the war from the Front?
4.Thomas blamed himself for the decimation of his troops in 1916. Do you believe he—or any officer leading a battalion—is responsible for the loss of human life?
5.There was much controversy surrounding shell shock and war neurosis, during this time. Soldiers were initially made to believe they were weak or “lacking moral fibre.” What are your thoughts about this, especially in terms of how we treat PTSD today?
6.Letters were of vital importance during WWI as they were the only means of communication between loved ones. What were your emotional reactions when reading these letters?
7.Do you still write letters? Would you like to see a return to traditional letter-writing?
8.Do you think Will’s mother was right to conceal the truth about his child from the rest of the family? What do you suppose were her motives?
9.Christmas is a time for family and reflection. What are your favorite family Christmas traditions?
10.Evie, Will, Thomas, and Alice plan to spend Christmas in Paris. Where would you love to spend Christmas, if not at home?
A Love Letter to Letters
A note from Hazel and Heather
When we began this book, we didn’t have the faintest idea what the process of co-writing would be like, but we were excited to tackle this new adventure. We’re so glad we did. Here’s the story of how Last Christmas in Paris came to be.
We first “met” in 2013 after being introduced online by our mutual agent, Michelle Brower, who had a sneaky feeling these two history nerds would get along. She was absolutely right. We hit it off instantly and for the next couple of years we supported each other through our journeys in publishing. In early 2015, Heather approached Hazel about writing a short story for an anthology she was working on which would focus on the events surrounding Armistice Day in WWI. That anthology became Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War, a moving tribute to those lost and left behind in war. As the anthology was nearing completion, we both felt there was an awful lot more to say about this world-changing event. We had another story we wanted to tell.
Towards the end of 2015 the idea to co-write a historical novel began to take shape through a series of “What if . . .?” e-mails. The final concept for a novel, written through all four years of the Great War, emerged from a frenzied Facebook messenger exchange one afternoon and Last Christmas in Paris was born. Letters were such a critical part of the war—the only way loved ones could keep in touch—so it felt right that this book would be an epistolary novel. What better way to tunnel into the hearts and minds of our dear Evie and Thomas?
At the outbreak of war in 1914, it was famously declared that it would be over by Christmas. This was what brought us to the idea of a group of friends making plans for the Christmas of 1914, which become horribly interrupted. Four Christmases would come and go before the war was over and the soldiers returned home. Since Paris was under threat of occupation by the Germans in the earliest stages of the war, it seemed this iconic city of romance would be the perfect place for Thomas and Evie to long to visit. And of course we both love Paris, too!
Once the topic was settled, we had to decide how we would accomplish this! But how do two writers, living in different time zones, in different continents, write a book together? It sounds difficult, if not impossible, but far from being either, we absolutely loved the whole experience.
The book was written through a literal exchange of letters of our own. Hazel would wake up in Ireland first thing, pen a letter from one of her characters, and excitedly wait for a reply. Several hours later, Heather would wake in the U.S.—ecstatic—to find mail in her inbox. She would respond in kind, sending her characters’ words over the e-waves. The process felt so organic; the story flowed, and in no time, we had a first draft! Editing, on the other ha
nd, became an operation of military precision. We used comment bubbles and colored fonts to carefully track our changes, and somehow, it just worked.
Of course, having a writing partner demands a lot of trust and commitment. We navigated the pressures of juggling our individual writing projects, and the demands of kids and family life along the way as well. Often, one of us would contact the other to explain a delay because the kids were sick, or the heating was broken, or some other crisis got in the way. Skype chats and Google Hangouts became weekly pow-wows to flesh out plot snags and character arcs.
But at last, we met! When Fall of Poppies released in March 2016, Hazel traveled to the U.S. as part of the book tour. Our first face-to-face meeting was in a hotel room in Connecticut (amid much squealing), and after several days of trains, car rides, events, cocktails, and laughs, we became the best of friends.
Writing this novel has made us both long for a return to the handwritten word. It is only because of the permanency of the letters written during the war that we are able to understand so fully its impact on those who lived through it. Shortly after beginning, Hazel was given a packet of letters written from her great-grandmother to her son, Jack, during WWII. The letters were returned, addressed “To Mother” after Jack went missing in action. He was never found and the family still don’t know what happened to him. To have this piece of family history is amazing, and to see the outpouring of emotion and the little snippets of daily life at that time is truly something to be treasured.
Writing can often be a lonely process, so it was wonderful to share that process with someone else. This book was a challenge in so many ways, but a complete joy in so many others. And the best part? In writing “The End,” we not only completed a book, but we also made an incredible friend along the way.
Researching the Great War
Writing about an event as monumental as the Great War was a daunting prospect to say the least, but from the very start, we knew we wanted to portray the event through the eyes of a soldier at the Front, and a woman in England. In addition to writing about trench warfare—a rather well-known topic—we were also keen to explore some of the lesser known aspects of the war, such as the role of the press and propaganda in informing the British public, the importance of the postal service, the roles of women outside of nursing, the burgeoning psychological understanding of shellshock and PTSD, as well as the impact of the Spanish Flu epidemic, which killed more people than the war itself.
Perhaps one of the difficulties when writing about an event such as this is the sheer volume of material available. Where do you start, and where do you end? What do you leave out, and what do you include? There is an extraordinary amount of primary source material about the war, documented in—of course—the thousands and thousands of letters sent to and from the front, as well as in the legacy left behind in the photographs, poetry, and books that were written at the time. To have access to these first-hand accounts was so inspiring and moving and really helped us to get inside the minds of our characters.
Of particular help were Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, Letters from a Lost Generation: First World War letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends; Letters from the Trenches by Bill Lamin; Letters and News from the Trenches and the Home Front by Marie Clayton; The Lengthening War: The Great War Diary of Mabel Goode by Michael Goode; The First World War Galleries by Paul Cornish; and War in Words by Corporal Daniel W. Phillips.
The Imperial War Museum in London was also an incredible resource. Heather made a trip in hopes of seeing artifacts first-hand. Reverently, she wound through the museum, reading every plaque, taking extensive photographs and notes, and purchasing more books than her suitcase could carry. She has also visited several memorials in France.
For those left behind at home like Evie, the war was often presented in a different light from what actually took place in the field. For example, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, there were 60,000 British casualties, yet the press reported the event as “a day of promise” and stated “things were going well for Britain and France.” War propaganda became a matter of course in England as government departments attempted to control what the public saw. In fact, letters from the Front went through heavy censorship, making it difficult for anyone to truly know what was really going on. Often wartime causes this sort of repression of rights and upheaval, but WWI marked the first time in western history that it took place on such a large scale.
Womens’ roles changed dramatically during the war as they took on the jobs left vacant by the men. In 1917, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (later named Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps) was established to free up men from the administrative and supportive tasks to bolster numbers at the front. More than 57,000 women served in cookery, mechanical, clerical, and miscellaneous roles between January 1917 and the end of the war in November 1918. Evie’s desire to write about the war was inspired by the few brave female journalists who did, indeed, get to the Front, most notably Nellie Bly, who reported from the Eastern Front for the New York Evening Journal. Novelist Mary Humphry Ward was also given a VIP “tour” of the Western Front as a guest of the War Office. Her subsequent account of what she witnessed, in the 1916 publication, England’s Effort, was written at the express request of former U.S. President Roosevelt in order to encourage American involvement in the war.
One of the most poignant—and tragic—points we came across again and again in our research was how much the world hoped the Great War would be “the war to end all wars.” History, as we know, tells us differently. In this centenary period, the Great War has returned to the forefront of our minds, and suddenly one hundred years doesn’t seem so very long ago. Writing Last Christmas in Paris during this unique period of reflection and remembrance made the whole experience particularly poignant, and as historical writers we are very grateful to have been able to write this story now.
Interesting Facts About the Great War
•38 million soldiers and civilians died worldwide during the WWI conflict.
•French Intelligence read, sorted, and shipped 180,000 letters written by soldiers each week.
•Florence Marie Cass, a telephonist, was one of many female telegraphists and telephonists who received the MBE for displaying “great courage and devotion to duty” during the First World War.
•American writer Edith Wharton toured military hospitals on the Western Front and also visited battlefields like Verdun. Her fundraising for refugees earned her a decoration as Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1916.
•One third of the planet’s population was infected during the Spanish flu epidemic coming in at roughly 500 million people.
•140 million socks were delivered to British troops, as well as 50 million pairs of boots.
•80,000 British women and more than 35,000 American and Canadian women worked as auxiliary nurses, ambulance drivers, cooks, telephone operators, clerks, and other miscellaneous positions during the war.
•To prevent from accruing blisters, soldiers urinated in their boots to soften them. Urine was also a good antiseptic that prevented trench foot.
•More than 95 percent of all soldiers in the trenches contracted lice.
•On the Western Front alone, 250,000 horses died in combat.
•More than 100,000 carrier pigeons were used to relay messages, and managed to reach their targets nine times out of ten. Parrots were kept in the Eiffel Tower to alert soldiers to approaching aircraft. They could spot planes before human lookouts.
•Official war photographers were instructed not to take highly disturbing photographs. The pictures that were considered too bleak were destroyed.
•Soldiers were prohibited from carrying any sort of camera to the front, though some disobeyed and took pictures with a VPK-Vest Pocket Kodak.
•Official British photographer Geoffrey Malins shot a film called The Battle of the Somme, which sold 20 million tickets in six weeks in 1916.
Lord Kitchener’s Guidance t
o British Troops
This paper is to be considered by each soldier as confidential, and to be kept in his Active Service Pay Book
You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy.
You have to perform a task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience.
Remember that the honour of the British Army depends on your individual conduct. It will be your duty not only to set an example of discipline and perfect steadiness under fire but also to maintain the most friendly relations with those whom you are helping in this struggle.
The operations in which you are engaged will, for the most part, take place in a friendly country, and you can do your own country no better service than in showing yourself in France and Belgium in the true character of a British soldier.
Be invariably courteous, considerate and kind. Never do anything likely to injure or destroy property, and always look upon looting as a disgraceful act.
You are sure to meet a welcome and to be trusted; your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust. Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. So keep constantly on your guard against any excesses.
In this new experience you may find temptations both in wine and women. You must entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.
Do your duty bravely.
Fear God.
Honour the King.
Kitchener