by Julia Bryan Thomas
Winter is the time for curling up with a good book, a steaming cup of tea, and a dog (or cat) nestled on the quilt over your lap. It’s the time when the world slows down and you can truly lose yourself in a world of imagination, excitement, and mystery. My third historical novel, The Kennedy Girl, comes out on January 14, the perfect time for indulging ourselves in winter’s delights and getting lost in a world of adventure.
When first I sat down to brainstorm ideas for The Kennedy Girl, I was instantly pulled toward the idea of a story full of intrigue and mystery. I knew I wanted to write a novel that took place in Europe during the Cold War, and I realized there was no better way to write it than through the eyes of a naïve young American who is swept up in a plot beyond her control.
Mia Walker, a nineteen-year-old from Brooklyn with no family or connections, is offered the chance to model in Paris. It’s an opportunity too exciting for her to resist. And as an author, I, too, was excited to plunge into the world of 1960, the fashion industry, and international intrigue.
Historical novels take a great deal of research. For The Kennedy Girl, the story begins with the glamouros world of fashion. I spent months studying the art of haute couture from the major fashion houses in Paris and Milan in order to describe the life of a model as accurately as possible. I immersed myself in vintage periodicals for inspiration, from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar to Life magazine. Those were the days of short, boxy jackets and narrow skirts, capri pants, and simple shift dresses, as fashion evolved from the more formal, full-skirted dresses of the 1950’s. Mia takes to her new modeling career and falls in love with her new life in fashion and design.
But in 1960, the eyes of the fashion world were on Jacqueline Kennedy, the young wife of Senator John F. Kennedy, who was newly elected to the presidency. Her effortless grace and beauty were featured on the covers of nearly every magazine in the United States. Many women of that era were eager to emulate her personal style, and Mia was no exception. In fact, Jacqueline Kennedy excited the fashion industry in Paris, as well. When she made her infamous trip to Paris in 1961, speculation was rampant about whether she would wear a gown by a French designer to the state dinner hosted by then-president Charles de Gaulle. She thrilled fans on both sides of the Atlantic when she arrived that evening at the Palace of Versailles wearing a gown by French fashion house Givenchy and speaking perfect French. It made her even more beloved in France, where she had lived for a year during college.
But fashion wasn’t the only consideration when writing this book. The setting for the novel was also carefully chosen. France was not only important to the fashion industry in 1960. It was also still recovering from the German occupation of World War 2, which made it even more poignant to explore the effects of the Cold War on a land that had suffered tremendously during the war.
As a student, I had taken French throughout high school and college and have had a love affair with the country since I was a teen. In this book, I was able to do a deep dive into 1960 and 1961 Paris, as well as the countryside and the Normandy coast. Many of the locations I used in The Kennedy Girl were places I had personally visited in my own quest to get to know the beautiful country. Normandy, in the northwest, is one of my favorite areas. Today, Honfleur, which I describe in the book, is still a bustling town with an old world, maritime feel. With its 15th century churches and the Vieux Bassin (Old Basin), it has been depicted in many paintings through the ages. In fact, Honfleur was a favorite subject of Claude Monet, and he created many works of art there featuring the estuary and the countryside, including one of his most famous paintings, Snow near Honfleur, which he painted in 1867. The natural beauty and history of the area made it a wonderful setting for the home of one of my characters, Chantal Fournier, when the action took the reader out of metropolitan Paris.
And finally, politics took the stage to define this story. Historically, 1960 was significant for the failed Paris Summit, the disarmament talks between the United States and the Soviet Union. When an American U-2 spy plane was shot down on the first of May that year and its pilot was captured, talks deteriorated between the two superpowers, causing an embarrassed President Eisenhower to admit that the U.S. was indeed spying on the USSR. The hopes both countries had for an end to the Cold War were dashed and tensions rose. Alas, the threat of international conflict remained, and France was squarely in the middle of it, making it the perfect setting for my book.
Mia discovers that she is being used as a pawn in a dangerous game and has no choice but to adapt and learn how to work as a double agent.
I enjoyed writing espionage into the novel, in part because I loved studying the tricks and techniques of the spy world that were in place more than sixty years ago. The tension, I believe, was elevated because the characters had to be creative if they wanted to survive.
In short, fashion, glamour, international tensions, and a network of spies made a fascinating combination to work with in a novel. In fact, It might just make the perfect companion on a cold, winter’s day.
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