One of my favorite book genres is historical fiction. I always seem to learn something new about a time in history that wasn't part of school curriculum. Couple that with an author’s compelling storyline and I'm hooked! That’s what happened when I read Martha Hall Kelly’s debut novel, Lilac Girls.
I had the opportunity to interview the author in 2019 during a book signing at the St. Louis County Library. Martha tells me it was a magazine article entitled Caroline’s Incredible Lilacs that led her to a museum of sorts, the Bellamy-Ferriday home in Connecticut. She says she went there to tour the beautiful gardens but also fell in love with its owner, New York’s fashionable socialite, Caroline Ferriday, and her fascinating life.
“Caroline used her old manual Remington typewriter as a weapon. She was very vocal about civil rights. She started the first black bank in Harlem. She sought out injustices around the world and she used correspondence to make sure people knew about it,” Martha says.
A former advertising writer, the book author details the heroic efforts of Caroline, the real-life glamorous actress and activist who, during and after World War II, championed a group of concentration camp survivors called “The Rabbits.”
Martha says, “They were Polish women who were operated on at Ravensbruck concentration camp, Hitler’s only all-female concentration camp in Germany to test sulfa drugs. And the Nazis not only used them as their laboratory animals, but after the experiments, the women hopped about the camp, so the Nazi’s nicknamed them, ‘The Rabbits.’”
Caroline enlists the help of her fashionable New York friends to raise money to bring Ravensbruck survivors to the United States. Taking them into her own home, she made sure they were rehabilitated.
Intrigued by Caroline’s contributions, Martha found equally inspiring, Caroline’s mother, Eliza, the subject of her second novel, Lost Roses.
Set a generation earlier during World War I, Martha's latest tome is a prequel and follows Eliza Ferriday, who was friends with Sofya, a member of the Russian royal family, chronicling true events and three equally strong women, from Russia to France.
“It starts out with being a gift, this rose, from Eliza to Sofya,” says the author. “Sofya takes it back with her to Russia, and she carries that rose with her all the way full circle back with her to the United States…and it’s kind of a nice metaphor.”
To bring the story alive for readers, Martha traveled to Russia and explored everything from the Tsar’s palaces to rustic villages. She writes that she visited Long Island, New York, and "peeked past the privacy hedges of Southampton’s tony Gin Lane into the famous shingle-style cottages and estates." And in France she "discovered a lovely, little-known Russian part of Paris, long fallen from public view."
For readers who want inspiration and hope, and yearn for strong role models, Martha's characters are worth getting to know.
Book club members will enjoy her website, which includes a blog, and for club meetings, food and drink recipe suggestions, a music playlist and photos of historical figures who inspired many of the characters: MarthaHallKelly.com.
Look for her second prequel to be launched in 2021, which chronicles Caroline’s ancestors and their empowering abolitionist roles during the Civil War.
A television interview with the author about how she crafts her characters can be viewed at HECMedia.org/posts/martha-hall-kelly-lost-roses.
Article by Victoria Babu
Originally published in Chesterfield City Lifestyle