I’m delighted to welcome Jennifer Ivy Walker and her new book, The Witch of the Brenton Woods, to the blog with the historical aspect of The Witch of the Brenton Woods.
Historical Aspect of The Witch of the Brenton Woods
I wanted the hero of my story to be an American paratrooper dropped into Normandy for the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, so I researched many of the different divisions of American servicemen during World War II. I selected the 507th PIR (Parachute Infantry Regiment), which was part of the 82nd Airborne Division, whose D-Day objective known as Mission Boston was to secure the Merderet River crossing in Normandy.
As I developed the historical fiction aspects of The Witch of the Breton Woods, I decided to have my fictional character, First Lieutenant Richard Zachford, be forced to make an emergency jump when his plane was shot down by German 88mm flak antiaircraft artillery guns. It was rewarding and challenging to weave together fictious characters who were part of the real 507th PI and weave them into the Battle of Saint-Malo, the culminating point of my novel.
I did extensive research about the Battle of Saint-Malo, a city in Bretagne (Brittany) that I had visited twice before as a high school French teacher taking my students on trips to France. When I discovered that a major focus of World War II had been The Battle of Brittany, I wove my fictional characters into the historical events which actually took place in the Battle of Saint-Malo, one of the crucial seaports that the Nazis controlled, which was deemed essential for the Allies to recapture.
Saint-Malo was one of the French towns designated as a fortress under Hitler’s Atlantic Wall program, and the Allies intended to capture the town so that its port could be used to land supplies and naval reinforcement. However, the Germans had covered the medieval castle into an underground fortress that was nearly impenetrable. When the Allies did successfully retake Saint-Malo, it had been so heavily damaged that it had been rendered unusable, and the courageous Malouins (the French name for the local inhabitants of Saint-Malo) slowly rebuilt their beloved city.
In writing The Witch of the Breton Woods, I wove together the events leading up to the surrender of the German Colonel Von Aulock (known as the Mad Colonel) on the 17th of August, 1944 and the surrender of the nearby German garrison of Cézembre on September 2nd. It was very challenging to entwine the plot development of my novel with the actual events which occurred between the D-Day landing of June 6th and the surrender of the Germans at Saint-Malo on September 2nd, 1944. I am very proud to have interwoven compelling historical fiction and thrilling romantic suspense in The Witch of the Breton Woods.
Blurb
Traumatized by horrors witnessed during the Nazi invasion of France, a young woman retreats to the dense Breton woods where she becomes a member of the clandestine French Resistance. When she finds a critically injured American paratrooper whose plane was shot down, she shelters the wounded soldier in her secluded cottage, determined to heal him despite the enormous risk.
Ostracized by villagers who have labeled her a witch, she is betrayed by an informant who reports to the Butcher—the monstrous leader of the local paramilitary organization that collaborates with the Germans. As the enemy closes in, she must elude the Gestapo while helping the Resistance reunite the American with his regiment and join the Allied Forces in the Battle of Brittany.
Can true love triumph against all odds under the oppressive Third Reich?
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Meet the Author
Jennifer Ivy Walker has an MA in French literature and is a former high school teacher and professor of French at a state college in Florida. Her novels encompass a love for French language, literature, history, and culture, incorporating her lifelong study, summers abroad, and many trips to France.
The Witch of the Breton Woods is heart-pounding suspense set during WWII in Nazi-occupied France, where a young woman in the French Resistance shelters and heals a wounded American soldier, hiding him from the Gestapo and the monstrous Butcher who are relentlessly hunting him.
Connect with the Author
MJ Porter 