Set amid the
turmoil of the Second World War, my new novel Map of Stars explores secrets, lies, espionage and, of course,
love. And, just as I did with my previous novels, I tapped into characters
living through a terrifying war: the ordinary people doing extraordinary things
in such dangerous times. And, in Map of
Stars, characters live in Kent, near the coast and so are right on the
front line. But where did the first spark for my story ignite?
I have known and
loved the Isle of Thanet for a half a lifetime. Having visited this eastern
part of Kent so often in the last 25 years, I began to feel that it was my
second home. So much so that last year, I left the hills of Buckinghamshire to
settle ten minutes from the sea at Margate; it felt like a homecoming. And,
already, Map of Stars was taking
shape.
Kent has ancient
roots, sleepy charm and a pretty landscape of orchards and hop gardens, with
the sea lapping at its toes. I love that I can stand on the cliffs at Dover and
see France in the haze across a stretch of water that looks, in some lights,
entirely swimmable. I was fascinated by what it must have been like to live here
during the 1940s, in plain sight of the enemy and under the flight path of the
bombers heading for London.
The germ of the
idea for Map of Stars crept up on me
like a spy. It was sparked by a recent news report about a mummified homing
pigeon trapped in a Kentish chimney, complete with war-time message strapped to
its leg. So far, so intriguing. Then I discovered that, during the war, pigeons
were taken on every mission leaving our air fields so, if the crew were shot
down, they’d be used to send home their co-ordinates. I found out that carrier
pigeons were also dropped from planes in little boxes with parachutes over the
French countryside for the Resistance. By now, my mind was racing.
And then I
unearthed our very own British Resistance: a top-secret guerrilla fighter
network dotted around the Kent countryside in foxholes ready to scupper the
dreaded invasion. They were the Dad’s Army with bells on and I was entirely
hooked on their little-known story. And so the story of Map of Stars began to form - and it is not just about pigeons!
It’s 1967, the
Summer of Love, when my heroine Eliza and her grown-up daughter Stella pluck a
mummified bird from a pile of soot that falls down the chimney of their home,
Forstall Manor, an Elizabethan country house deep in the Kent countryside. The
note sent with this pigeon is written on a secret coded war-time document (the
‘map of stars’) and is a desperate scribbled message of love for Eliza,
delivered more than twenty years too late.
The sender is
Lewis, Eliza’s lover who went missing in the war and who she believes is dead.
Reading his words takes her straight back to the time when she was newly
married to childhood sweetheart Nicholas, when the manor, commandeered by the
War Office, was buzzing with Morse code and when talk was of rations, spies and
invasion. And, in the midst of this, Eliza struggles with her loyalty to her
husband, obligation to her country and her secret love for Lewis.
My novels may be
unashamedly romantic, but I always like to weave in a darker side. When the
message from Lewis falls into Eliza’s hearth, as well as reviving painful
memories of loss and sacrifice, it leads to the uncovering of her own, terrible
secret from those dangerous war-time days. In fact, it is her inquisitive
daughter Stella who delves into the past, in a bid to mend her relationship
with her mother. But what is Eliza hiding?
Discover Map of Stars and my other novels at http://www.catherinelaw.co.uk/
