Emily Bleeker is a best-selling author whose dual-time-line novel When We Were Enemies moves between a World War II prisoner of war camp in Indiana and the feverish fame of contemporary Hollywood in a story that was partly inspired by her own family history.

Hi there. I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler, and today on Binge Reading, Emily talks about intimate betrayals made in the promise of fame and tells the remarkable story of how a serious health crisis gave her the Eureka moment when she was determined to write fiction.

Now she’s an award-winning best-selling author with 2 million readers worldwide.

Our Giveaway This Week

Our Giveaway this week is Three Holiday Novellas from my own Of Gold & Blood historical mystery series.

They are Book #4 Tangled Destiny, which is a New York Christmas story, Book # 6, Hope Redeemed, a Spanish ranch romance and Captive Heart, Book #8, a Hawaiian Christmas, all romantic sequel novellas, to longer mysteries.

Download these three entertaining reads for one week only. The links are in the show notes for this episode on the website, the joys of binge reading.com

FREE HOLIDAY NOVELLAS

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/1z2rd1zjlx

Binge Reading goes fortnightly 2024

Last week I asked listeners should I stay weekly or go fortnightly with the podcast show next year, and thanks to all those who responded.

The overwhelming number of you (90 per cent) said yes, you’d be happy with fortnightly episodes. So that’s what we’ll be doing starting in January.

Before we get to Emily a reminder, you can help defray the costs of the production of the show by buying me a cup of coffee on buy me a coffee.com forward slash Jeannie, J E N NY wheel W H EE Lx.  Small x.

And remember, if you enjoy the show, leave us a review, so others will find us too.

Links to places and things mentioned in the episode

Camp Atterbury

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Atterbury-Muscatatuck

Operations Allies Welcome

https://www.dhs.gov/allieswelcome

What Emily is reading now:

Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein;  

https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Love-Brainwashing-Attachment-Totalitarian/dp/1138677973

What You Do To Me by Rochelle Weinstein,

https://www.rochelleweinstein.com/books/what-you-do-to-me

Strong Like You by Travis (T.L.)  Simpson.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/178619792

Where to find Emily online:

Website: emilybleeker.com

Email: emilybleekerauthor@gmail.com

Introducing Book Club favorite Emily Bleeker

Emily Bleeker – dual time line saga from WWII POW camp to contemporary Hollywood

Jenny Wheeler: But now, here’s Emily. Hello, Emily, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.

Emily Bleeker: Hello, thank you for having me.

Jenny Wheeler: Emily, When We Were Enemies, which is your seventh book and the one that we’re talking about today, is partly set in a POW camp, a prisoner of war camp in Indiana during World War II.

And it dips into aspects of your own family history. I wondered if you’d like to start by just giving us an idea of how it all came together.

Emily Bleeker: Yes, sure. It was years and years ago. My dad told me a story about how my grandmother worked in a POW camp in Mississippi, and I had no idea what he was talking about because I did not even know that was a thing. So it went in one ear and out the other.

But I have just become more interested in my grandmother’s life and her story.

I decided to do some research on the topic and found out that was a real thing during World War Two.

And the other interesting part of that story about my grandmother is that she met an Italian priest there. She was married to my grandfather and they had a platonic friendship that continued for the rest of his life.

He would draw pictures on postcards and send them to her every so often throughout the rest of his life.

Italian POWs in US camps

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, I must admit, I didn’t realize that that the U. S. had European prisoners of war, like Italians and Germans and people from the continent shipped to the U. S. to be put into camp.

So that was a revelation to me as well. Tell me, just getting back to your grandmother, did that priest go back to Italy? Because I gather quite a few of them stayed on the states afterwards.

Emily Bleeker: Yes, he did go back to Italy. He didn’t stay, though you’re right. Many did. Many joined the Italian Service Unit.

More than 90 percent of the POWs joined that unit after World War II and then became a part of the U. S. Army. So doing service missions, mostly building ships and things like that.

Jenny Wheeler: And I think it becomes clear in the story as you read it, if I remember correctly that Mussolini actually collapsed and the Italians more or less came over to our side before the war officially ended.

A few months before perhaps the war ended, those prisoners were no longer quite the enemy, were they?

Emily Bleeker: That’s very true. In fact, a lot of them were conscripted. Many times there is a tradition of hiding their sons so that they wouldn’t be conscripted into the army at that time.

It really was a very conflicted. They were not conscripted. or brainwashed as the German soldiers were.

There was this belief that once the Italian soldiers got on to the field, they would just start fighting and know what to do. But actually it was the opposite. They were like, “Oh my gosh, this is war.” And they ran away in a lot of cases and were like, “we don’t really want to do this. This is not really what we’re up for.”

Emily’s family links to the story

Jenny Wheeler: When We Were Enemies is a multi-timeline story. Part of the story is set in that POW camp, part of it is contemporary, and then there’s the middle generation between those two timelines.

You’ve got three timelines running, three generations of women and two of them with special relationships with priests, one way or another.

Just getting back to your grandma, was she Italian? Could she speak the language with the priest?

Emily Bleeker: No, that’s where things were different. Definitely. This isn’t her story, but it was definitely inspired by her.

But she did not speak Italian, so it’s interesting because they became friends without being able to speak the same language for quite some time, so they both picked up on the language, and they mostly communicated through art, so that’s why he would send her the postcards with his drawings.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. In your story, the contemporary character, Elise, her grandmother works in the POW camp, but she is of Italian heritage. She speaks the language. And so she ends up being appointed a translator, but she feels the slight a problem of being too friendly with the Italians and being accused of being a traitor herself.

That obviously was not the case in your family background.

Emily Bleeker: No, it was something that was more inspired by reading through newspaper articles and through other historical documents about what the feeling was at that time, and how there was this fear, we speak, there were internment camps for Japanese Americans, and there were some internment camps for Italian Americans.

It was definitely not as big of a presence, but there was a fear there. I’m not Italian, but my husband is a hundred percent Sicilian.

From Indiana to Hollywood

I got to spend a lot of time talking with his family and what their whole experience with that wasn’t actually his, I think it was his grandfather was a POW in a camp, but the camp was in India.

But they say that he came back all fattened up that he came back chubby and they were actually surprised by that fact.

Jenny Wheeler: Elise is the descendant of Hollywood royalty too, because the character who starts out in the POW camp, Vivian, becomes a singer and sings on stage for the troops and ends up having quite a career in Hollywood, but Elise is not at all drawn to the idea of fame like her grandmother and mother were.

 I wondered if that whole idea of fame, which has become so huge now with the Insta influencers and so forth, the Kim Kardashian’s of this world, whether that was also this was also part of what drew you to the story?

Emily Bleeker: Absolutely. I think multi-generational fame and wealth can be a curse.

I have to say I haven’t experienced it personally, but I definitely think that I have experienced this idea of dreaming for a book career and then getting it and realizing that life is still life.

And that job that was a dream, is also still just a job, and that there are pluses and minuses to both sides.

I’ve become quite interested and fascinated with that and especially with the people who reject that idea of chasing after fame, and in the story. Elise’s siblings are also famous. So she is the only one who says ‘I’m not sure I want this.’

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. And we won’t give any storylines away, but the people who want fame are so willing to almost trade anything to keep it that she feels quite betrayed in the end by some of the things that happen in the name of chasing after that prominence.

The challenges of being a priest in a war

Emily Bleeker: Yes.

Jenny Wheeler: The other interesting question that the book raises is the difficulties and conflicts that priests may encounter, particularly in times of war.

Would you like to talk a little bit about that in both generations, really?

Emily Bleeker: Yes. I was raised Mormon, so I was not raised Catholic. Exploring more about Catholicism was interesting for me, but I do think that every religion has those limitations that they have to push back against and ask themselves questions about and really explore.

And so when it comes down to the storyline with the priest and war, I found that there were a lot of examples of priests, especially in Italy, who made the choice to join those brothers around them and go and fight, and to serve their fellow man by being a spiritual companion.

And I thought that was such an interesting take because they didn’t have to. As a priest you didn’t have to be in the army, but that many of them chose to. I found that such an interesting act of service,

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, because they’re there really to serve the men around them. They’re not particularly there to fight, are they?

Emily Bleeker: No, it’s about serving their fellow men.

Jenny Wheeler: I gather that as part of your research, you did visit a prisoner of war camp. Tell us about that.

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Camp Atterbury – 110 years of service

Emily Bleeker: Yes, I actually went to Camp Atterbury. It was absolutely fascinating. Camp Atterbury is still a military base. They do have a museum that has all of the information about the POW camp, has different artifacts, and they have preserved the chapel in the meadow.

I was able to go and see that, which was absolutely amazing to go and see this chapel that was built out of scrap materials, and the interesting thing about the Italians that I learned is that they were very religious.

The Germans came through and were not very religious, but the Italians in almost every location that I researched made at least some attempt to create a chapel so that they could worship. which I found really interesting and beautiful.

Also the US was dedicated to following the Geneva Conventions and saying, yes, we will let people have their own religion. We will follow these rules because we would like everybody else to follow these rules too.

Jenny Wheeler: I gather that Camp Atterbury has recently celebrated its 110th anniversary and it still is an operative camp. Tell us a bit about what’s been happening there in the last decade.

Emily Bleeker: Yes, the thing that interested me the most the funny thing is I know somebody who actually trained there for the National Guard, but I didn’t find that out until I started posting about all of this and so I talked to him about it and he said it’s actually like pretty old school.

Particularly the barracks are pretty old school, but the thing that I found very interesting is that after the U. S. pulled out of Afghanistan, there was something called Operation Allies Welcome, and that meant that any refugees from Afghanistan were welcome in the United States, and Camp Atterbury was one of the places that they were housed, and then also where services were provided to rehouse them and help them start a new life in the U. S. if that’s what they wished.

I found that to be a lovely parallel because just like when the Italian prisoners came, even though they were prisoners, there was an outcry in the area saying, we don’t want our enemies here. And then as they worked alongside the different people from the U. S. countrymen.

They really found that they came to be able to appreciate them as people, too. There was a lot that I read about Operations Allies Welcome where the community came together. They wanted to make sure to get clothes, food, whatever they could to help out these allies, these refugees that came over from Afghanistan.

The life threatening challenge that sparked writing

Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. When We Were Enemies, it’s either your seventh book. You’ve sold 2 million copies and you’ve got a Wall Street Journal bestseller list to your credit. How did you actually get started on this road?

Emily Bleeker: It’s a long story, so it goes far back. It goes into my 20’s, even though I didn’t think I was a writer.

I was an elementary school teacher and then I was a stay at home mom. But in my 20s, I had cancer and I was given a 30 percent chance. to turn 30. And I had two little kids.

And so, when I turned 30, when I made it past the five years, when I was given back all of this time that I thought potentially I could have lost, I made some goals for myself.

One of them was to learn a new instrument, so I learned guitar. But there were a couple of others. One of them was to write a manuscript, and I didn’t think I would get it published at all.

I just thought I would write it for myself, and that was just a goal for myself. But when I started sharing it with friends and family, they said you should try and get this published, which just opened this whole new door of challenges.

I started going down the path of ‘what’s the very next step?’

That was the question I constantly asked. ‘What’s the very next step?’ I’ll do that. And then I’ll probably be done.

But every time I did the very next step, I’m like, okay, I’ll try the next one. About five years altogether later, I had a publishing contract, an agent, a publishing contract, and I was a published author.

It was an interesting winding road to get there.

Wreckage – debut novel that was an instant hit

Jenny Wheeler: How amazing. And that first manuscript, was that fiction or was it based on your previous life-threatening experiences?

Emily Bleeker: It was fiction. It was Wreckage, which was my first novel

Jenny Wheeler: Ah, Wreckage was a big seller in its own right, wasn’t it? And it had quite a wide scoping vision for it. Tell us about Wreckage.

Emily Bleeker: Wreckage came to me while I was watching a TV show where there were only two people that were telling a story that of how they had been left on a boat after their ship sank.

And there were tons of people on this raft but only two people telling the story, and they ended up being the the saviors in every story that they told.

And I asked ‘what if they’re lying?’ So that was my big question

I always want to say that I’m sure these poor people were not lying, but I simply asked the question, what if they were, what would somebody lie about on TV?

What would they want to hide? And so that’s the story of Wreckage where you have part of it, where they’re lying.

You’re lying. They’re lying in the present to the interviewer. And then you get. to flash back into the past to when they had a plane crash in South Pacific and then see what the true story was.

Jenny Wheeler: They ended up on a island in the South Pacific after their plane went down. At the beginning, were there just the two of them or were there others at the beginning as well?

Emily Bleeker: There were others at the beginning as

Jenny Wheeler: And did those people survive to tell their story?

Emily Bleeker: I don’t think I can tell you that.

When I’m Gone, the second was even better

Jenny Wheeler: That’s all part of the story. That’s fantastic. But that was an amazing hit for a debut novel, wasn’t it?

Emily Bleeker: Yes, it did it, really to this day. My husband said to me the other day ‘what is it about Wreckage?’

It just calls to people. There’s something about it, it’s that thing that you can’t predict, with publishing and with writing, you just never know what’s going to hit people in the exact right way.

And that one did.

Jenny Wheeler: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Did you have to face that issue of having a brilliant first book and how on earth am I going to top this with my second and third? Did you have to go through that?

Emily Bleeker: Absolutely. I was very nervous about my second novel, which is When I’m Gone. Surprisingly, When I’m Gone actually has done even better than Wreckage.

I was very lucky to have that one hit twice as strong. I still, once again, don’t really know what it was about those first two, that they just really caught fire.

I feel like I have a lovely fan base. They are really loyal and seem to like my overly emotional stories. I’m grateful for that.

But I feel like I feel that every time. I never write a book and I’m like, ‘ah, this will be fine.’ I’m always like, ‘oh, I hope people like it.’

Jenny Wheeler: Now tell us about When I’m Gone because it also does have an amazing premise. I think you must have a gift for these high concept stories. I think that’s what they call them, the high concept books, which have got a hook which you immediately think Oh, I wonder what happens? Tell us about When I’m Gone because it’s another amazing one.

A book that came out of painful life experience

Emily Bleeker: When I’m Gone… as I said, I had cancer and after I had cancer, I was like, I will never watch a movie or read a book about cancer ever in my life, is too triggering.

And then I wrote this book. But it was based on this idea that when my kids. were little. I had an 18 month old and a three month old when I was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma.

And I was told, like I said, that I had a 30 percent chance of making it five years and I asked myself, will my children even remember me in five years, even if I made it all the way to five years, would they be able to pull up memories.

And so, I started writing journals with them. It was more journals about what they were doing, and so it made me think about what does someone do when they know that potentially they could be gone soon?
When I’m Gone is about a woman who wrote letters to her husband when she knew she was dying, and she planned to have them delivered for six months after her death, and it revealed a secret.

Some of it was advice, but it also revealed a secret that she just felt she couldn’t tell him in real life.

It covers that journey and her husband, Luke, becomes obsessed with these letters and with this secret.

Jenny Wheeler: That is just amazing. Yes. Your books fall into the wider category of women’s fiction or, certainly from what you’ve now said, emotional family stories and they’re verging on domestic thrillers in some case.

Have you got any thought about how you categorize them? Do you think of them in any particular niche?

Emily Bleeker: I don’t, I like the general term book club fiction because then they can be just about anything.

I have a hard time putting myself in one box. I think that I would lose a lot of joy writing if I just had to stick with exactly one specific subgenre.

So I like that idea. It gives me a little bit of flexibility, gives me a little more freedom, and then I can come up with, my brain, honestly, is just always coming up with stuff that it’s like, how about this?How about that?

So really. it’s just narrowing them down into what’s possible, what works, what I want to write too.

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