Book Club Discussion Guide

ISLANDS OF DECEPTION: LYING WITH THE ENEMY

Constance Hood

We know that your Book Club has hundreds of choices.

 Thank you for selecting Islands of Deception: Lying with the Enemy.  This is the story of a brother and sister whose decisions result in lifelong consequences. A complete synopsis with spoilers is included at the end of this Book Club discussion guide. 

Expectations

Do you relate more to Hans or to Esther? Why?

What were their personal expectations for their future?

How do their personal expectations influence the decisions that they make? (CH 1)

Identity

Hans and Esther have very definite views of who they are.  How did they identify themselves?

How significant is their Jewish upbringing to their identity?

Hans Bernsteen arrives solo in the United States.  What influences him to fully change his identity?  (CH 2)

Have you ever had a time when you wanted to completely revise your identity?

Esther Bernsteen spends high holidays with her family.  What is she looking for? How does this event support her initial decision to remain in Amsterdam? (CH 3)

While the United States is neutral in the war, it has already set rules in place for aliens.  What things confuse Hans as an immigrant?

Physical isolation and social isolation shape both brother and sister. How do they make isolation work for them? What strengths do they find in themselves?

Relationships

We meet the first loves of Hans and Esther.  He chooses a pretty German speaking nursing student.  She lives with an artist.  How do their common experiences of love and family influence their expectations in these relationships? (CH 4-8)

What personal conflicts do Hans and Esther face as war breaks out in Europe?

Brother and sister experience disappointments in their first love relationships.  How do they react to the shattering of their dreams?  Who/what do they find to ease the pain?  (CH 10)

Deception

There are many layers of deception in this book – Hans’s identity, Esther’s lies, governments in turmoil.  Is deception a healthy way to cope?  Under what circumstances?

How does Esther use deception to save her own skin? (CH 23)

Hans is a natural investigator, inquisitive and tenacious.  What traits reveal that to us? (CH 22)

The U.S. army presents yet another culture for Hans.  Why do you think Hans adapts so well to Army life? (CH 18)

The central incidents in the South Pacific are espionage activities.  How does Hans work with others to solve the unanswered questions? Does this reflect a change in his world view?  (CH 24-28)

The supporting characters are also based on real people and true events. How do supporting characters help us understand these events?  (CH 19-20)

Worldview

The Holocaust is an attack on human decency.  How does that work with society’s imposition of morals and behavioral standards for people?  Why might some judge Esther’s actions? (CH 21)

Was there any moral authority on earth that might have stopped the Final Solution (Holocaust)?  What might have been done?  Why wasn’t anything done?  (CH 29)

How does commentary from the Final Solution resonate with you today?  Is there a way to intervene and make sure that humanity does not repeat this act?

Germany was only one of three Axis powers.  What else contributed to the idea of a “master race” or “empire?”  Why did Japan and Italy buy into this? (CH 35-37)

Self-Worth

Hans is consigned to desk work after his foray into espionage.  He cannot disclose his actions for more than 50 years.  How might this affect his self-esteem and social relationships?

Hans had originally joined the U.S. Army to go fight in Europe and find his family. After the war he learns their fate.  How does it affect him?

He has changed his identity completely.  How is his internal dialogue affected by these events? (CH 37-39)

Displaced people married hastily, sometimes in unlikely combinations.  What would be the reasons for this? (CH 38-40)

Hans and Esther survived the war years by engaging in secrecy and deception.  How might that have affected friendships and family life in the future?

Themes for Book Club discussions

•Trust  •Secrets  •Redemption  •Transformation  •Survival  •Sacrifice

Book Club Appendices

CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT

PARTITIONING OF FRANCE

The story gets messy as we try to figure out who is spying on whom, and why.  Nazi conquest of Northern Europe occurs at breathtaking speed. By the time the war began in 1939, Fascism and National Socialism is well established in the parliaments of many countries. A large populist base is in favor of national identity and expulsion of the Jews.

The partitioning of France destabilized the heart of Europe. Americans think of France as being a tidy ally, lining up and marching along with us and the Brits in a crusade against Germany.  Our image is of De Gaulle and the Free French.  However, De Gaulle was in Britain, and the Free French were a small component of what had been France. France was occupied in May 1940.  German soldiers marched down the Champs Elysee in Paris, which was decorated with Nazi banners. The Northern half of France was Occupied France, an extension of the Third Reich.

The Southern part of France was Vichy France, under a French government ruled by the French Nazi party.  Unlike occupied France with its mix of personal loyalties, the Vichy French were on a fairly solid footing, enough so that the Germans could let Vichy be independent.  The French colonies followed these same patterns, with the film Casablanca as the most famous American example of the partitioning.

Much of Islands of Deception takes place on New Caledonia, a French colony.  New Caledonia was originally a transport colony.  Criminals, and most importantly French Communards were transported to the Island rather than suffer a death penalty.  Les Miserables is an example of the rise of the Communards, anti-royalists.  Australia and New Zealand were also transport colonies.  The significance of this is that the planters homesteaded their lands and were of mixed loyalties.  They were willing to do business with Allies or Axis powers in order to sustain their plantation life.  So, the character Chemin actively supports Axis activities in hopes that the Japanese will free everyone from European empires.

I went to Paris to the Musee Militaire to understand as much as possible about Vichy France and New Caledonia.  New Caledonia was a staging area for some 150,000 U.S. and ANZAC(Australia and New Zealand) troops in their battle for the Solomon Islands.  The exhibits at the Musee Militaire focused on Free French and resistance.  New Caledonia did not appear in any exhibits, and Vichy was also not mentioned.

Months after I returned to the U.S., the government of France released 200,000 Vichy French documents.

I am grateful to Dr. John Munholland at the University of Minnesota for his guidance and writings on this topic.  His book Rock of Contention explains how the Pacific war was staged from New Caledonia.  Our fate was changed by brave people who headed out to floating rocks in the middle of nowhere and fought for freedom.

AN OUTRAGEOUS REALITY

What a boring world it would be if everyone were perfect. People would stack up in our lives like a bunch of Lego bricks, with uniform strengths and clearly defined edges. Writers build stories, but stories are not made of interchangeable characters. We look into ourselves and at the people who have been closest to us, hoping for some greater understandings. From there we conjure up the scenarios. Personal flaws and foibles have the best chance of reaching readers’ minds and hearts, and of engaging readers in a character’s trajectory. Readers like the edges of life. If we think we can entertain or instruct others, we share our stories with an audience, and that’s when we take some risks.

I was asked to describe how historical fiction writers do this without offending family members or friends.

When you’re writing a story, it’s difficult enough to get your own understandings down on paper. Others’ sensibilities can’t be a major concern in early drafts. People rarely see themselves as characters and I’m going to be making changes as I go along. Like characters, our loved ones have an exterior life that they present.  We go through a pretty intrusive process to dig away at their interior thoughts and desires.

In rare instances we meet a person whose story needs to be shared.  Islands of Deception: Lying with the Enemy is based on true stories. My estranged father put a packet of notes into the mail, about 12 single spaced pages. Dad was a spy and it was evident that he took pride in his work. Was this story even true? Authentic tales of espionage during WWII were something that he could not disclose.  Spying is quiet work.  Coupled with his story was my aunt’s account of her life during the war years.  For more than 50 years my father and his sister had raged against fortune and accused each other of lies and cheating. Their only agreement was this:  Layers of secrets could not be revealed to their spouses or their children. There were reasons for the lies and for decisions that they were forced to make as young adults, Jews in a Europe gone topsy-turvy with persecution and war.  After many extended visits to Holland as well as a foray through U.S. Army Counter Intelligence records, it was evident that both brother and sister were speaking their truths and that they were telling the same story.  It was not a pretty one.

How they might have felt about their characterizations was not part of any creative decision in the book. If I were restricted by “What might grandfather think about this?” I would never write another word.  This story would not be served if these were simple people with reasonable experiences. More than a year after sending the MS out to agents, I know why the story had to be told.  It was more important than the individual narrators. The approach of worldwide fascism in 1939, and the responses of the characters is highly relevant to us.

The accounts of my father and aunt needed to be a part of our larger universal story.

Stories of immigrants are larger than the individuals.  The experience of the Jews is larger than entire communities. My two Dutch teenagers came of age in a world that offered them existential questions, pain and loss.  They were a part of a larger community of thousands of families; people who were forced to leave their homelands and live in exile. These stories of exile, emigration, and the rending of families need to be told. They come complete with the anger, complete with sores, with the scabs, and complete with the scabs picked open.

Islands of Deception: Lying with the Enemy took on a life of its own.  Forget the outlines, and forget the storyboards. These are full bodied dimensional people.  There’s tenderness, there’s rage. Awful things happen, good things happen. Since my father and aunt had lived their lives in secrecy, I had to construct the scenes from their words and actions over the years. The ups and downs of life play themselves out whether they are in a comfortable home, in an army barracks, or in a concentration camp. We have to listen to the character’s experiences. Revealing the human story means that we have to invade privacy.

Your story has life on its own, and your characters are simply actors.

Go ahead and change names.  A few physical characteristics or mannerisms can help.  I made my character a beer drinker, and my father hated beer.  Change a gender when you can. Make sure that significant events of the time are accurate.  That helps readers make connections to what they know.  Before I submitted my manuscript, I asked friends to do some table readings.  Readers wanted to tell their stories too, which I saw as a good sign. We ended up with our real people and their imaginary friends who aren’t really all that imaginary.

One of my favorite characters is a cat.  Hans Bernsteen has to somehow arrive in the South Pacific as a civilian.  His cover is that he has been dropped off from a Dutch merchant Marine ship.  I knew someone whose father was a Dutch merchant captain during the war.  My friend Ina and I sat at her coffee table for a couple days going through Marine records, books, logbooks, photographs, just to see “What did that look like? What kind of work was done on the ship? What is a convoy and why was it so dangerous?”  Ina described a horrific torpedo attack. While the men are preparing the ship for a hit, Mickey the cat is racing to move her kittens to safety. Mickey’s sense of fear and protection told us so much about the attack on a convoy, waves of fear that traverse miles of deep water.  Then, another reader told of his uncle working endless hours in sick bay taking care of shipwrecked victims covered in burning fuel.

These stories grew, and I think my final interview was absolute gold.  I was reworking the end of the book, and had a chance to spend an afternoon with someone who had been a member of the German army.  After about an hour, his son picked up the bottle.

“Here, have some more wine.”

“Oh, I’m fine, I don’t need any more.”

Chris poured.  “Yes, actually you do. Anti-Semitism is coming up next.”

So, we went for it.  The old soldier talked, I recorded.

Ultimately our stories are all about the reader. One review comes to mind, written by a family member who did not read the manuscript until Islands of Deception: Lying with the Enemy was published.

I was captured with the vividly painted scenes of stories I knew to be true as a family member. Reality is often outrageous and that is what Constance has so artfully depicted with her emotionally accurate tale of hard choices and unexpected outcomes. Her book has soul, captivating characters and realities that leave you shaking your head.

Nancy Hall

 So, go ahead, face your people, and serve your story.

ODD BITS –  A BOOK CLUB TREASURE HUNT

We think and live in symbols, even when we don’t intend to.  I see symbol as motif, a little pattern that follows us through our lives.  Artists take these motifs and weave additional meanings through the daily events. The symbols and motifs in Islands of Deception: Lying with the Enemy came to me naturally.  I wasn’t intending to write heavy symbolism that required a lot of interpretation.  However, a couple of these motifs might interest your book club as you interpret characters and situations.

We experience hunger and loss of appetite. What do these characters hunger after?  What do they crave?  What destroys their appetites?

Food appears in many scenes.  It remained in the scenes because it told us something about the people and their situations.  What is revealed at this banquet?

Birds kept coming in and out of my dreams as I was processing this story.  I saw them, I heard their flights, their screams. What stories do the birds tell?

How did issues of race and culture collide in the turbulence and destruction associated with a world war? To me, race defines the current of the story.  Sometimes it is quiet, sometimes we know it is there but we can sail along.

BOOK CLUB SYNOPSIS WITH SPOILERS

The purpose of the included synopsis is to assist book club members with things like character names, chronology and places.

 Islands of Deception: Lying with the Enemy

No one believes Hans Bernsteen when he sees the truth in 1939 — a future of failed dreams, steeped in propaganda of a new world order that has no place for him. The rash young man meets his sister Esther at an Amsterdam café to outline plans for fleeing to America. He has procured two refugee visas for emigration. Furious at the idea of disrupting her comfortable bohemian life, she leaves, assuming his pipe dream will blow over.  He fully intends to pursue a career as a New York fashion photographer.

Hans sails for New York and makes a mix of first impressions on Americans.  A lovely young blonde captures his heart, but her family is involved with the German Bund, Nazi sympathizers. They expect him to celebrate their efforts to steal military hardware. Hans discovers he is a natural investigator with a gift for getting to the bottom of dark cesspools of human invention. He learns to conceal what he knows.

Esther’s self-absorbed actions have left her abandoned in Amsterdam, surrounded by extended family and casual friendships. Her raw emotions are often tangled between truth and secrets, leading to fruitless outcomes. In the summer of 1942, all Amsterdam Jews are transported to the camps in the east. Charm is a weapon, and she uses it to survive. Flirting with an SS officer in Bergen Belsen, she manages to secure his protection for three years. White lies and concealments are her currency in this island of horror, a place shielded by the mountains and forests of German fairytales.

Hans has not forgotten his family or his Dutch roots. He joins the Army, planning to fight in Europe and do what he can to save them. Instead, he is sent to the South Pacific, where Allied battles are staged from a neglected French island, a prisoner colony from the 1800s.

An American soldier with no ID and no weapon, Hans is dropped into the New Caledonia jungle. His cover is to pose as a Dutch trader. New Caledonia planters, Vichy, and Free French opportunists plan to make money, and settle back into their island ways. His life now depends on his ability to tell credible lies in five languages. He uses his cameras and his broad smile to captivate the residents of a brothel and identify their bosses, a ring of Vichy sympathizers who transmit Allied movements to the Japanese.  His curiosity takes him out to a remote plantation to meet his opponent and learn how this is being accomplished.

After the war Hans learns of the annihilation of his family and his Amsterdam community in the death camps. The gaping wounds of war are opened for all to see.  When he and Esther both lay claims to the home in Amsterdam, they reunite, sharing truths in Dutch and their collaborations of lies in languages that others understand.