A very warm welcome to versatile author Philip Paris on the Reading and Writing Blog today, who shares the inspiration behind his writing and latest novel. Effie’s War is an atmospheric, exciting wartime story set against a backdrop of real-life incidents. First a little about the book.
Author, playwright and journalist Philip Paris lives in the Highlands of Scotland with his wife, Catherine. He is best known for his books about Orkney’s famous Italian chapel, built by Italian POWs during WW2.
Effie’s War
In a remote corner of Scotland something momentous is underway. When Effie’s father receives a government notice to quite Kirk Farm, the lives of the Ross family and those of the whole community are utterly disrupted.
But for Effie – irrepressible, beautiful, vital – wartime changes bring her close to Toni, an Italian prisoner of war sent to work on the farm. Before long, the young couple are planning a future together when the war is finally over.
It’s a future that’s under threat from the start, for there are those among them who cannot quite be trusted. Someone is determined to find out what lies behind the upheaval – and to pass those secrets into enemy hands. To stop them will create devastation beyond anything anyone could have imagined.
Based on true events of the Second World War, this evocative novel captures the emotions, dangers and atmosphere of the days when the world faced its darkest hour.
Writers and Ideas
I’m fascinated by how writers obtain ideas and how both can be affected by time. Here’s a personal example of what I mean. In the late 1970s I had the idea to write a stage play about domestic abuse where the victim was male. Goodness knows where this came from as it was an era when you simply didn’t read or hear anything about these matters. The timing was poor. At the age of 20 such a drama was way beyond my ability and I doubt that any theatre company would have touched this topic.
Fast forward to 2011; I was made redundant and suddenly found myself with a great deal of spare time. I began to think again of the idea I had back in the seventies and the result was that I used the concept as the basis for a novel. Men Cry Alone was published the following year. So, that idea had a gestation of more than 30 years.
All my books have had completely different ‘beginnings’. My wife, Catherine, told me years ago about how hundreds of people living locally, in the Highlands of Scotland near Tain, had been evicted from the land during WW2. At that point I had a busy day job and was involved in other writing projects, so I tucked away the details in the mental filing cabinet that writers have, without considering doing anything with the information.
Following the publication of my novel Casting Off towards the end of 2016, I had intended to spend the next 12 months attempting to write short stories (not my genre and I didn’t know if I could do it). However, Catherine and I visited the Tarbat Discovery Centre in Portmahomack and I was reminded about the enforced mass evacuation in WW2. On this occasion the timing was right. I was immediately consumed by the desire to use these dramatic, real-life events as the backdrop to a novel. The short stories were returned to the filing cabinet.
So what were these events? On 11thNovember 1943 around 900 people living in the Tarbat peninsula were given four weeks to leave their homes, crofts and farms. They were told that the military wanted the land for battle practice. This wasn’t the full reason – they wanted a stretch of beach to rehearse for the D Day landings, scheduled to take place in Normandy the following year. Of course, this was one of the Allies’ greatest secrets of the war. The farmers in the affected area had little option but to sell all their livestock, which was heartbreaking for many. To help process crops, Italian POWs were bought in from the camp in Kildary about five miles away.
These events provided a fantastic backdrop to Effie’s War, which was published by Black & White Publishing on 6th June to coincide with the anniversary of the D Day landings. It’s a book about love and loyalty, betrayal and, finally, forgiveness, with most of the action taking place within those highly-charged four weeks of November/December 1943.
The characters are entirely fictitious, unlike my WW2 historical fiction The Italian Chapel, where I set out to tell the amazing true story behind the creation of Orkney’s famous Italian chapel and in doing so wrote about the real artists involved. With Effie’s War I wanted complete freedom as regards characters and I have to admit to enjoying the feeling of ‘liberation’. Even so, I had to do a fair amount of research to understand life in the Highlands during the 1940s and this required interviewing many retired folk to get a grasp on subjects as diverse as farming to funerals!
Readers have ranged from a twelve-year-old girl to a ninety-eight-year-old lady. Interestingly, of all the comments made at the many launch events I’ve managed to cram into the diary since the book’s publication, the most perceptive came from that young girl.
Thanks so much for that fascinating post, Philip. Wishing you great success with all your books!
You can find out more about Philip’s other books on his website.
Author, playwright and journalist Philip Paris lives in the Highlands of Scotland with his wife, Catherine. He is best known for his books about Orkney’s famous Italian chapel, built by Italian POWs during WW2.
However, his work is diverse, ranging from a contemporary novel about domestic abuse against men to a humorous novel about residents in a Highland care home who, desperately trying to meet rising fees, set up a chat line for men who want to speak to mature women ‘in a particular way’!