On Folly Beach
Page 41
Author’s Note
SEVERAL YEARS AGO I WAS in the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a family wedding. While there my family and I took a sightseeing tour of the famous Cape Hatteras lighthouse. It was on that tour that I learned of a German U-boat sunk right off the coast from where I was standing.
I’ve always considered myself a history buff, but couldn’t recall ever learning in school anything about Germans being that close to the United States mainland. I was fascinated, and continued to mull over that factoid until the right book came along.
I chose Folly Beach because of its reputation during the nineteen forties as being the place for fun. The Folly Beach pier attracted top-notch entertainers, and it’s rumored that the famous South Carolina dance, the shag, was first performed there. Folly was a spot of light during a dark time in our nation’s history, and thus the idea for a book was born.
Before writing the book, however, I had to educate myself on the history of “Operation Drumroll,” the German code name for the initiative to send a handful of U-boats to our Atlantic coast. It began in January 1942, catching the U.S. completely unaware. In the first six months of 1942, the Germans sank 360 merchant ships and oil tankers—more than had been put down in the Pacific by the Japanese from Pearl Harbor to Midway.
If Hitler had granted his own admiral’s request for more U-boats to be sent, or if the U.S. had delayed even more in establishing a naval defense, blackouts, and convoys through our eastern seaboard shipping lanes, it is completely conceivable that the U.S. would have lost the war before we’d barely begun to fight. As the great statesman Winston Churchill said, “. . . the U-boat attack was the worst evil. It would have been wise for the Germans to stake all upon it.” Thankfully, for us and the rest of the world, they did not.
It was in the course of researching the U-boat invasion that I also came upon two other fascinating historical events that I was also ignorant of—the Duquesne spy ring and the landing of German saboteurs on American soil. By sheer luck on our part and general stupidity on theirs, the spy ring and saboteurs were apprehended before too much damage could be done. But for the purposes of this book, I had to ask myself the what-if question: what if they hadn’t all been caught? And so the story of Folly Beach in the nineteen forties and the real history of World War II melded into On Folly Beach, as told through the eyes of Lulu O’Shea, who is nine years old when the story starts in 1942.
To faithfully portray Lulu’s story, I had to do a lot of research—a lot more fun than it sounds! I found the following books very helpful and interesting, and highly recommend them to those of you who’d like to learn more:Torpedo Junction, by Homer H. Hickam, Jr.
Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America, by Michael Dobbs
Folly Beach: A Brief History by Gretchen Stringer-Robinson
Folly Beach: Glimpses of a Vanished Strand by Bill Bryan
The Humours of Folly photographs by Frank Melvin Braden, words by Ellie Maas Davis
For those of you who’d like to learn even more, Folly Beach offers plenty of summer rental homes for your own “research.”
Karen White is the award-winning author of eleven previous books. She grew up in London but now lives with her husband and two children near Atlanta, Georgia. Visit her Web site at www.karen-white.com.
CONVERSATION GUIDE
On Folly Beach
KAREN WHITE
This Conversation Guide is intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing
A CONVERSATION WITH KAREN WHITE
Q. The idea of the bottle trees is really interesting—how did you learn about them?
A. A friend of mine is from New Orleans, but now lives in Memphis. On a recent visit, I saw that she had a bottle tree in her backyard. She explained what it was, and how she’d bought it in New Orleans and brought it to her new home as a sort of reminder. Like everything in my life, her explanation sparked a story idea.
Q. Do you know anyone else who has a bottle tree, and do you have one yourself ?
A. I don’t have one—yet. But since I first saw one at my friend’s house, I’m seeing them more and more. While looking through a pictorial coffee table book, The Humours of Folly, I saw a picture of a bottle tree in a Folly Beach backyard that cemented my idea to set the book on Folly.
Q. What inspired you to write On Folly Beach? Was it visiting Folly Beach?
A. I knew I wanted to set part of the book during World War II and in the South Carolina Lowcountry. I didn’t have to dig very deep to discover that Folly Beach was the hot spot for dancing and fun during the nineteen forties, and pictures from the era were a wonderful inspiration. I visited Folly Beach after I’d started writing the book, renting a house there for a week during the summer for additional research.
Q. One of the themes of the book seems to be the power of literature over the imagination—both positive and negative. Do you think if Lulu hadn’t read Nancy Drew mysteries, she would have been less likely to spy on others? And is her spying really a bad thing, since she may have prevented a Nazi invasion?
A. I was a voracious reader in my teens, and I can cite specific examples of how particular books changed my way of thinking, or acting, or perceiving the world around me. Yes, I really did have a “Scarlett O’Hara period” during middle school. I do think Nancy Drew and the other books Lulu read definitely had an influence on her, and I hesitate to say that her spying was “bad.”Trying on new identities is part of growing up, after all. And luckily for the citizens of Folly Beach and the rest of the country, Lulu’s “spy period” happened at just the right time.
Q. The idea of leaving secret coded messages in books is intriguing—is this something you’ve done yourself ? If not, how did you come up with the idea for Maggie and Peter to communicate?
A. A few years ago, a friend of mine loaned me an old out-of-print book she’d acquired from a used bookstore. Inside was a handwritten letter dating back to the nineteen forties from a person in Australia. The contents of the letter were mundane, but I was fascinated by the identities of the sender and the recipient.
Of course that sparked a book idea—what if the contents weren’t so mundane? What if they were from two lovers instead—lovers who had something to hide? And that was how Peter and Maggie’s story began.
Q. How did you come up with the framing device of using two different wars to tie together the two different stories?
A. Since the whole history behind the German U-boats off the U.S. coast was one of the idea sparks for this story, I knew I needed something current to counterbalance those events. That was how I thought of two women personally affected by war, but sixty years apart, with a Folly Beach bookstore as a touchstone for both of their stories.
Q. You’ve played with different points of view in your previous novels, and in On Folly Beach, you decided to stay with third person throughout.Why did you decide on this particular point of view for On Folly Beach?
A. I always let the characters in my books “decide” on how they want me to tell their stories. Maggie and Lulu were adamant about not telling their stories in flashback, which made it necessary for me to jump back in time with them to tell their stories as they happened.
I chose not to write any of the women’s points of view (young Lulu, old Lulu, and Emmy) in first person because that would have made one story more prominent over the others, and I saw them all as being equally important.
Q. The planned Nazi invasion of the eastern seaboard is a fascinating footnote in history. Why do you think this isn’t something that is discussed much in school?
A. I wish I knew the answer to that question! I always thought that I had a pretty good education, both from my schooling and from my dad, who is a definite history buff, so it was a surprise when I first heard about it several years ago while on a trip to the Outer Banks, North Carolina.
I think the main reason why the whole episode h
as been relegated to history’s footnotes is because the worst that could have happened didn’t. In other words, if the D-day invasion hadn’t been the success it was in turning around the war, we would only be hearing about some big plan to end the war that was never actualized and then move on to the events that were. If the Germans had sent over more U-boats and effectively blockaded our coasts in 1942, we wouldn’t have been able to help England and her allies. That could have been the end of the war, which would, of course, have made it into the history books as more than a footnote. And those history books would probably be written in German, too.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Please note that some of the following questions reveal important plot points. Readers who have not finished the novel may want to stop at this point and return afterward.
1. Although Folly Beach, South Carolina, is a real place, “folly” also describes some of the mistakes the characters make throughout the story. What are some of these follies?
2. The story of the planned Nazi invasion of the East Coast is based on historical fact—is this something you already knew about before reading On Folly Beach?
3. Did you find Lulu a sympathetic character despite her habit of spying as a child and her abrasiveness as an adult?
4. Do you think Lulu can be held responsible for Peter’s death?
5. Despite Peter being a Nazi spy and a murderer, do you think he deserved to die? Was he truly a “bad” man?
6. Why do you think Maggie refused to evacuate her home before Hurricane Hugo hit?
7. Were Lulu and Robert wrong to not tell Maggie the truth about Peter being a Nazi spy for so many years? Do you think Maggie suspected the truth since she never wanted to go to the Atlantic House restaurant?
8. How many times did Lulu misinterpret what she observed, or do you think she was always correct in her interpretation?
9. Do you think Cat seduced Peter, or did Peter seduce Cat to not betray his secret?
10. Do you think Peter really loved Maggie? Do you think Maggie would have still left with Peter if she had known the truth about him?
11. Why do you think Lulu finally decided to tell the truth about the past to Emmy and her family?
12. Emmy and Lulu are linked with two different wars, and the effects of war on the homefront. What are some of the similarities between what they experienced because of war?