New York Times Best-selling author Pam Jenoff on her amazing novel THE ORPHAN’S TALE.

I was absolutely blown away by this story of two women and their friendship set in a circus during WWII. It is riveting and I could not put it down. I was compelled to get in touch with her to ask her to come on as a guest blogger for our site. I want to share her story with you. “The Orphan’s Tale introduces two extraordinary women and their harrowing stories of sacrifice and survival.”

PJ:Thank you so very much for having me. I’m honored that you liked the book. I was researching in the virtual archives of Yad Vashem when I came across two little-known stories: first, a remarkable account of the rescuer’s circus, an actual German circus that hid Jews, including rival performers from another circus. Second, a horrific story of a train of unknown infants, babies taken from their parents too young to know their own names and headed for a concentration camps. I was inspired to fictitiously bring together these two accounts in my book.

LZ: The circus is a compelling setting for your novel The Orphan’s Tale. Traditionally the circus is a group of outsiders or misfits. How do your two main women, Noa and Astrid “fit” into that world?

Noa is a young Dutch girl of just sixteen who has been kicked out by her parents after becoming pregnant by a German soldier. She is living above a rail station, which she cleans to earn her keep, when she discovers the box car full of infants and makes the fateful decision to rescue one of them and flee. She finds shelter with the circus but as to learn how to perform in order to fit in. Meanwhile, Astrid is an experienced aerialist, but is also a misfit. She had left her own family’s circus to marry a high-ranking German officer, who is then ordered to divorce her because she is Jewish. When she returns, her own family is gone and she finds shelter with a rival circus, where she must now fit in and assume a false identity to survive.

LZ: How important – and possibly underexplored – positive woman’s relationships and friendships?

I enjoy exploring bonds between women especially when they are improbable. Here, Astrid is none too happy to have Noa with the circus: she doesn’t think the younger woman can learn the trapeze act, she doesn’t like the attention Noa brings to the circus and she doesn’t believe Noa’s story that the baby is her younger brother. But Astrid quickly finds that she needs Noa in order to survive. The question is whether these two women can save one another or whether their secrets will destroy them both, and I think this is a metaphor for the larger question of women’s relationships today.

LZ: What did you learn about aerialists in particular, their way of work, their discipline that moved you – if it did?

I was so impressed with the artistry of the circus in general, the strategic ways in which the acts are sequenced and the seating arranged and everything in between. For the flying trapeze, there was a great deal I had to learn about how many performers and what was possible, both in general and for a new performer like Noa. I had an aerialist on retainer (helping me for free!) but it wasn’t until the end when I actually understood enough to ask the right questions.

LZ: You say you had to imagine putting your children on the train. Can you explain what you meant by that?

I knew from the moment I read the account of the train of unknown children that it would feature prominently and early in my book. But I waited forever to write it because I knew that in order to do it justice I would have to metaphorically put my own three small children on that train and imagine how it would feel as a mother to have that happen. I did and it was shattering – very hard to write for along time after.

LZ: How many of these stories like the boxcar full of snatched babies have not been told? And how important is it to bring these stories to light today?

I have been working on Holocaust issues since I was a diplomat for the State Department in Krakow, Poland more than 20 years ago. Yet I am continually amazed by the stories that are still untold. For example, I was just reading a wonderful non-fiction book, Les Parisiennes by Anna Sebba, about women in France during World War II. There were incredible stories, one about Chrstian Dior’s sister who was a resistance fighter, another about Elisabeth Rothschild, the only member of that family to be killed in a concentration camp, who was in fact a convert to Judaism. Stories of artists and performers and fashion houses. If only I had the time to write them all!

LZ: From some of your research into circuses at that time, what did you learn or find fascinating that you couldn’t put into your novel, because possibly it had nothing to do with the story?

I was amazed to find centuries of Jewish circus dynasties in Europe before the war which were then destroyed. This isn’t the main focus of my story but I was able to weave it into Astrid’s family background.

LZ: What is your method or discipline for writing?

I’m a total pantser (as in seat of the pants) meaning I don’t outline. I just go “blah” and thousands of words come out in random order. Someone once called this “throwing up on the page” (sorry!) It is the worst way to write a book because it is hell to edit, so I don’t recommend it but it is the only way I know how.

LZ: Coincidentally that is the way I write and yes, it is “hell to edit.” C’est la vie.