The Nightingale

Sometimes a story penetrates deep within you, shaking you violently and challenging you to ignore it. This is exactly what happened to me with the story of The Nightingale. In truth, I did everything in my power not to write this novel, but my research into World War II led me to the story of the young woman who created an escape route from occupied France, and I could not shake it off. Thus, her story became the starting point, and it is in reality a story of heroism, risk, and wild courage. I couldn't distract myself from it; I kept digging, exploring, and reading until this story led me to other equally astonishing stories. It was impossible for me to ignore those stories. Thus, I found myself under the weight of one question that haunted me, a question that remains as relevant today as it was seventy years ago: Under what circumstances would I, as a wife and mother, risk my life? And more importantly, under what circumstances would I risk my child's life to save a stranger?
This question occupies a central position in The Nightingale. For in love, we discover who we want to be; but in war, we discover who we are. And perhaps sometimes we don't want to know what we might do to survive.
In war, women's stories were often ignored and forgotten. Women usually return from the battlefields to their homes and say nothing, then move on with their lives. The Nightingale, then, is a novel about those women, and the bold choices they made to save their children and preserve the way of life they had grown accustomed to.