The Little Dutch Girls follows an 82-year-old woman who is being interviewed about her, her sister, and her friend’s role in the Dutch Resistance. What inspired you to tell this story?

Reading a random article about these courageous women on the death of Freddie Oversteegen sparked my curiosity in the Dutch Resistance during World War II. In my research, I learned that the two sisters, Freddie and Truus, were brought up by their mother who believed in the workers’ paradise and taught her daughters to believe in that as well. Although at the beginning of the war, the communists didn’t participate in the fragmented Dutch Resistance due to Stalin’s alliance with Hitler. The girls tried to defend their nation after Hitler defeated their armed forces.

When Freddie was recruited to be interviewed for a documentary about the resistance, through flashbacks I tried to imagine Freddie at age fifteen when she joined the armed effort with her sister, Truus, and their good friend, Hannie Schaft. How did they feel? How did they muster the courage to go boldly forward? At the beginning, they were couriers spreading news, but they graduated into guerrilla fighters quickly. What interested me were the struggles these patriots endured after the war because of their wartime affiliations and work in the resistance. Freddie preferred to keep the past where it belonged, while her sister became an artist and educator and was not shy from discussing the war.

My narrative is an attempt to shed light on Freddie who fought for freedom and bore the psychological scars to prove her loyalty to the resistance.

What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?

We still hold many misconceptions about the war and its multiple layers. The war wasn’t fought just by Americans or the Brits. Many other people were involved in the struggle. Most histories deal with the generals: Patton, Eisenhower, Rommel, and Montgomery but fail to talk about those who clandestinely fought the Nazis and experienced firsthand their trauma at seeing friends and family butchered.

I wanted to show not only the physical pain of war but the psychological toll it takes on an individual. Freddie closed herself off from the world and concentrated on her family. Only later life and through the encouragement of her sister Truus was she able to overcome survivor’s guilt. Hannie the redhead girl was executed days prior to the German surrender in the Netherlands. For many years, the government blocked a memorial to Hannie.   

What scene in the book did you have the most fun writing, and what one was the most challenging?

I had the most fun writing the back-and-forth comments between the interviewer and Freddie. His antipathy toward her because she had fought with the communists is palpable. Her disavowing Stalin’s attack on Czechoslovakia and her repudiation of the communist nonsense gave the interviewer the one-two punch. The most challenging was telling the story of the dunes at Overveen and the ringing the bell for the brave men and women executed there.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?

I’ve just finished Iberia, an extensive story on the Spanish Reconquista, which follows a family through those difficult times. My work now in development is The Elf in the Table, a historical fantasy set in the Revolutionary War.

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