Latest news with #World War II
CBC
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Q&A: How this Guelph author's research on World War II led to writing her 2nd novel
Social Sharing When aspiring writer Samara moved with her boyfriend J. to the little town of Upton Bay to write a story, she wasn't expecting to discover that behind the town's charming facade is a dark history. That's the premise of Guelph author Karen Smythe's new book A Town With No Noise. The novel will have its official launch next month. Smythe joined CBC K-W's The Morning Edition g uest host Josette Lafleur to talk about her inspiration and her writing process. Audio of this interview can be found at the bottom of this story. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Josette Lafleur: Tell us a little bit more about A Town With No Noise and what readers can expect. Karen Smythe: Well, the book is about two fictional small towns actually, and it's told in two parts. The first part of the book focuses on Upton Bay, which is… a southern Ontario pretty town that is very attractive to tourists. Part two is actually set back in World War II in Norway. But the link is the narrator, whose name is Sam. She's an aspiring writer. She's on assignment in Upton Bay. She's to write an article about the town. The novel opens with Sam traveling to Upton Bay with her boyfriend. His name is J. and they stay with J.'s grandfather, who's a German immigrant. And while there, she does uncover some secrets about the town, including its treatment of migrant workers, but also about J.'s family and its past in Nazi Germany. Then the novel becomes focused on Sam's investigation of her own family's past in occupied Norway. She becomes much more interested in researching and writing about what happened in Norway under the German occupation. So there are lots of surprises in that part of the book also. Lafleur: So what inspired you to write this book? Smythe: Well, I started out writing the book about a town like Upton Bay. There were so many stories that I wanted to tell about the people who lived there and the changes that the town had undergone, from becoming an agricultural area gradually transitioning into kind of a winery destination and a tourism hotspot. But as I was writing and developing characters, the one character who kind of took over for me in terms of the story line was J.'s grandfather, Otto, who had immigrated just after WW II to Canada. And the stories that I was uncovering as I was thinking about and researching, that aspect of that character kind of turned into more of a wide research into WW II. My narrator, Sam, had a Norwegian family background, so the research took off from there, and that's how the book kind of evolved and became what it is. Lafleur: What else did you learn during your research? Because you do combine fiction and nonfiction in this novel. Smythe: So the novel is kind of a hybrid, especially in part two of fact and fiction. When I was researching about the Norwegian experience under German occupation, I discovered a lot of things that I hadn't known. I do have a family background based in Norway. My grandparents on my mother's side immigrated to Canada from Norway, and I hadn't heard about any of the things that I discovered about the war, Norway, and what it was like for not only my family and Norwegians in general but also that the Jewish population in Norway. So it was kind of surprising and shocking to me to learn about how the Holocaust took place in Norway, as well as in other countries in Europe during the war. Lafleur: So Sam almost sounds like you. Smythe: She is – and she isn't. She's a young woman and she is aspiring to be a writer, but she's not a fiction writer. She's more of an investigator, and so she's more interested in writing about history and writing about social issues and things like that. In the book, she changes the course of her future by shifting her career as well. She doesn't become me by any means. Lafleur: The Norwegian connection as well. It does sound like there's a little bit of inspiration there. Smythe: Yeah, although the stories about Norway are completely imagined. None of my family experience is what is experienced by the characters in my novel. But certainly a lot of the research I did uncovered a lot of stories that did happen to people exactly the way they happen in the novel, but they're fictionalized. Lafleur: So Karen, this is your second full length novel. You are usually prone to writing short stories, and they're included in a compilation of short stories called Stubborn Bones. What's your process when you're preparing a short story opposed to a longer novel? Smythe: That's a great question. When I'm writing short stories, which I haven't done for many years, I have been focusing on the novel, but when I'm writing short stories, I'm very alert to details. And as I'm writing stories, I'm always making notes about very specific images, sounds, and details. When you're writing a novel, those things are important and do come into the writing process for sure, but the scope is so much larger. So in my process for writing a novel, I also have notes and keep track of all kinds of thoughts and ideas and images, but also map out a story line and the characters. I put a big white sheet on the wall with markers, and make maps kind of the shape of the novel and how the characters are interconnected. So that's, I guess that would be a general way of describing the difference. The short stories are much more narrow and focused versus the timelines that happen in the novels. Lafleur: So what do you hope readers take away when they pick up A Town With No Noise? Smythe: I think I want them to realize that how we think about the past and remember the past is not always what you think and that it's really important to understand how history is written and remembered. So the novel is not only about these characters and these towns and these stories, but it's about how history is written and how history and memory get passed down through the generations. Lafleur: So what's next for you, Karen? Are you sticking with longform or are you doing more short stories? Smythe: I'm kind of doing a little bit of both. I have some ideas percolating for short stories, but I also have another novel that I'm polishing off and some ideas for yet another one after that. So lots of stuff going on, not exactly sure which one I'm going to tackle first.
CBS News
21-05-2025
- General
- CBS News
U.S., Italy sign pact to recover remains of American soldiers missing from World War II
The United States and Italy signed a pact to bolster efforts to recover the remains of American soldiers who went missing in action during World War II, officials announced Tuesday. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) — the U.S. agency tasked with identifying fallen service members — and Italy's culture ministry signed a deal to improve operations to locate and recover the remains of fallen military members who were never accounted for in Italy. The memorandum also establishes the protection of archaeological sites involved in the search efforts, Italian officials said in a statement. The Italian peninsula was the site of intense battles from 1943 to 1945, following the Allied invasion of Sicily and the campaign to liberate Italy from Nazi forces. It's difficult to pinpoint how many missing U.S. soldiers were killed in Italy during World War II, but roughly 72,000 American servicemembers remain unaccounted for from the war around the world, according to DPAA. The remains of nearly 1,000 Americans who died in World War II have been identified since recovery efforts were renewed in the 1970s. A photo dated May 1944 showing American soldiers of the Fifth Army dashing ashore during the establishment of a beachhead south of Rome, on the west coast of Italy, during World War II. STF/AFP via Getty Images Forensic experts at DPAA spend years using DNA, dental records, sinus records and chest X-rays to identify the remains of service members killed in combat. Earlier this year, a 23-year-old U.S. soldier who went missing in action during an aquatic mission in Italy during World War II was accounted for. The new agreement to recover remains of fallen soldiers in Italy was signed Tuesday by Luigi La Rocca, the head of Italy's Department for Heritage Protection, and Kelly McKeague, the director of DPAA. "The right to research and remember those dead during the war is now combined with the protection of the archaeological heritage for which the ministry of culture is responsible," Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli said Tuesday. Giuli said the agreement was a further step in "our decade-long cooperation with the U.S. agency for prisoners of war and missing in action, as a tribute to those who sacrificed their lives to contribute to our freedom."
Wall Street Journal
07-05-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
Notable & Quotable: V-E Day
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