History Never Dies: A Guest Interview with Historical Nonfiction Author Tim Brady
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
~ James Baldwin
In the process of researching for a historical novel or nonfiction account, trapped memories and astonishing experiences are uncovered all the time. One can step into a library and listen to the men and women who change the course of history while being shaped by it.
Historical nonfiction author, Tim Brady, is setting another trapped story loose this month through his latest work, Three Ordinary Girls. The subjects of his book, The Oversteegen sisters and their friend Hannie Schaft, refused to be trapped by the events happening in their country during WWII. Most of us would not know their incredible story of resistance that was trapped in them until their final days.
Chatting with Brady about his writing experience, his writing career, and Three Ordinary Girls we can learn just how important it is to fight the confines of ignorance and release important stories to all who listen.
MK: It is often said, when writing about history, an author has to stay out of the weeds. While researching Three Ordinary Girls, what weeds did you have to stay away from?
TB: For me, a lot of my writing is a journey into the weeds. This was no exception. I’d never visited The Netherlands prior to researching this book; I don’t speak Dutch; I’m not a teenaged girl; I’ve never lived with the threat of being hauled off to a death camp. As you can imagine, I was in a deep thicket from the start. The acts of researching and writing, discovering and understanding as best I could, the experiences of my principal characters---this was my trip through the rough.
I’d made a journey like this before, for Twelve Desperate Miles, my first WWII book, which gave me some confidence that I could do it again. What these exercises do is bring a fresh perspective and a sense of novelty to the writing---opening the foliage for others to what I see.
MK: How did your initial interest in the Oversteegen sisters’ story become compelling enough to craft a book about their fight during WWII?
TB: Three Ordinary Girls began with an obituary in the New York Times. One of the principal characters in my book, the youngest of the three girls, Freddie Decker-Oversteegen, died in September 2018, just days before her 93rd birthday. I’d never heard of her or her sister, Truus, nor the third of the trio, their friend, Hannie Schaft, but the obituary was enough to convince me that this was a story that ought to be told to an American audience.
Three young women, two of them teenagers, the third, a college student, had joined a Dutch resistance cell during World War II. Not only did they pass out illegal newspapers and literature, swipe ID cards, and help transport Jews and other members of the underground from one safehouse to the next, but they performed acts of violence. They killed Nazis and Dutch collaborators. These were rare acts of murderous resistance for women, not just in The Netherlands, but in the whole of Europe. They were rarer still for teenage girls.
I knew just by reading the obituary that if the outline of Freddie and her sister’s lives were actually true, I would only have to convey the story accurately to make it compelling.
MK: You have mentioned the importance of firsthand accounts and personal documents for historical writings in past interviews. When has a less direct source surprised you in its importance to a book you were writing?
TB: In the midst of researching Three Ordinary Girls, I came across several interviews done with the sisters, primarily by Dutch television, when the women were in their 80s and 90s. As mentioned above, I do not speak Dutch and none of the interviews provided an English translation or subtitles. Even so, by this stage in my research, I knew their stories pretty well, had picked up enough of the language to catch certain words and references, and with the accompanying images and documentary footage, I could follow along with the substance of the interviews.
What turned out to be really illuminating, however, was just listening to the way Truus and Freddie spoke and told their stories. Hearing their voices, the pauses and intonations, the laughs and somber moments, was a great window into their character and the depth of their experiences. It aided me immensely when using other sources, which had been translated into English, including Truus’ memoir, and print interviews that the sisters had done through the years.
MK: Many of my readers and myself have ties to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Iowa Writers’ House. Can you share an experience or lesson learned that has impacted your career due to that affiliation?
TB: I took a course in Iowa City that was called at the time, non-fiction novels, taught by a professor named Bill Murray, who had been around the workshop forever. Bill lived in an old stone cottage on some cul-de-sac near a creek in the city and it was always cold as hell inside. If memory serves, he kept a stack of blankets in a chair for us to grab if we got too chilled during the discussions. There were about a dozen workshoppers in the seminar and we read Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, and others. I remember great, shivering talks on the merits and demerits of these books, and having my mind opened up to the possibilities of telling compelling stories through the medium of narrative nonfiction.
MK: Do you read or write in a genre outside of history? If so, why do you find yourself entertained by the other genre?
TB: As a kid, I loved reading history and majored in the subject in college. But somewhere along the line, I fell in love with writing fiction and wound up getting an MFA in the Fiction writing program at Iowa. I published a few short stories and wrote a couple of unpublished novels, which were applauded for their writing style, but criticized for being plotless and meandering. In the midst of a freelance writing career, I found myself hired to help develop a Ken Burns-style documentary series on the American Revolution called Liberty! for PBS. I found that working in history, and within the context and confines of a television documentary format, gave my writing more narrative direction than it had ever had before. I also began to read and appreciate narrative histories like I had as a kid. It turned out to be a nice journey back to my roots and I’ve continued working in history for many years since.
MK: Thank you so much Tim for sharing with readers about your experience preparing Three Ordinary Girls. Good luck with the release. I know we cannot all wait to meet the three incredible Dutch resistance fighters featured in your new book.
To preorder Three Ordinary Girls, follow the links just below. Be sure to check out other Tim Brady books I have listed or a couple of titles from his own personal reading list.
Tim Brady is an award-winning writer whose works include Twelve Desperate Miles and A Death in San Pietro. His latest work, Three Ordinary Girls, is set to release February 23rd. Brady is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has written a number of PBS documentaries, and helped develop the series Liberty! The American Revolution, winner of the Peabody Award. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. More about Brady can be found on his LinkedIn profile.