Rita Bradshaw tells us about writing her new novel

We’re celebrating new books from some of our favourite authors, chatting to a different writer each month about their latest release. This week, Rita Bradshaw tells us about writing her novel, “Beneath A Frosty Moon”.

WHEN I first began thinking about a story that would take WWII evacuees as its central theme, it didn’t take me long to realise that my knowledge was limited and somewhat idealised, to say the least.

Little people standing at train stations with their cardboard suitcases and labels round their necks being sent to the safety and joys of the country; mothers keeping the home fires burning and doing their bit, and fathers and husbands fighting for their country. All rather neat and packaged.

Of course, real life was completely different, but how different I had no idea – until I began my research, which threw up some real ordeals for the children.

There were broken marriages and families, and all the other complications and heartaches that go with a terrible and allconsuming war.

The more I researched, the more I knew I wanted to write not only about the challenges some children faced in their supposedly “safe” new environment, but about the mothers left with empty nests and finding themselves working outside the home for probably the first time in their lives – with all the temptations that afforded to lonely and unhappy women.

And the fathers and husbands fighting overseas, only to come home (if they were lucky) to a family they didn’t recognise any more.

Many of these men had changed significantly, too; the dreadful things they had seen and experienced, and the barbarity and atrocities that went on in the POW concentration camps, marked them for ever.

But, through it all, some marriages survived and grew stronger; children adapted and fought back to make a life for themselves in their new surroundings, and the great British spirit that is always at its best in adversity shone through.

My research was fascinating; shocking sometimes, and heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure. And it always left me with huge respect for the ordinary men, women and children who refused to bow down to evil, not just in this country, but in Germany and others, too.

For example, we meet Etta in my story, an unremarkable German woman who was prepared to put her freedom and ultimately her life on the line to help English POWS escape the Nazis.

There were lots of Ettas in different countries all over the world; men and women you normally wouldn’t look twice at, but who, when the chips were down, stood up for what they knew was right, regardless of their own safety.

Men, women and even children did extraordinary things in the worst of circumstances.

Life can be more terrible and more amazingly uplifting than fiction; people can forgive the unforgivable; men and women do sacrifice their own lives for others, and love is stronger than hate.

That is the truth that my research proved time and time again, and I hope it is reflected in Cora’s story, and in those her life touches.

Enjoy being transported back to an era that few remember first-hand now, but which gave our country the freedom and liberty we take for granted today.

I hope reading “Beneath A Frosty Moon” reaffirms a belief in right triumphing over might. ■