Conversations

Stuck at home because of Omicron? Looking for new things to watch and listen to? Have I got a list for you!

For a start, I’d be delighted to have you join me at either of these upcoming events: 

Wednesday, January 12, 2021 I was so happy to hear that The Woman All Spies Fear is a finalist for YALSA’s Excellence in Nonfiction Award, and I’m excited to be part of a free online conversation with the other four finalists about nonfiction, writing, research, and why history matters. Register here with the host, SLJ, to watch the 1.00 pm ET panel (or to receive a link to it afterward).

Sunday, January 16, 2021 Join me at 12:30 pm ET for an online talk about Elizebeth Smith Friedman, hosted by the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau Country. I’ll be sharing some insights into both her remarkable code-breaking career and her fascinating marriage to William Friedman, who is sometimes called the “Godfather of the NSA.” Register here

Over the past few months, I’ve also recorded interviews about codes, spies, and Elizebeth Smith Friedman with some wonderful hosts. If you’re looking for something to listen to while you wash the dishes or make dinner or walk the dog, you can find our conversations here: 

Author, Can I Ask You? with Joni B. Mitchell

Wine, Women & Words with Diana Giovinazzo Tierney and Michele Leivas

On the Record with Tom O’Connor (starting at 4 minutes in)

They’re all terrific interviewers, and the first two shows have plenty more episodes available! Definitely worth checking out if you’ve got cabin fever.

How we tell women’s stories

THE WOMAN ALL SPIES FEAR officially debuts today, and I’m grateful to the many people who helped me along the way: librarians, archivists, cryptology enthusiasts, early readers, publishers, friends, family, and all of you who have cheered me on. Above all, I’m grateful to the extraordinary code breaker at the heart of the book. Elizebeth Smith Friedman fought the Mob and helped defeat the Nazis, but for decades she was all but forgotten. That’s changing, and I’m glad to help put her in the spotlight.

(photo courtesy of the George C. Marshall Foundation, Lexington, VA)

Elizebeth was a woman of many secrets, and sometimes I had to become a code breaker myself to crack them. It was exciting to discover new material about her childhood, courtship, marriage, and career – as well as a missing year in her life.

She made me think hard about the way we tell women’s stories. It’s good that we are doing more to celebrate women’s achievements, but Elizebeth herself was wary of hero worship, and I think she had a point.

In our efforts to show that certain women were heroic, sometimes we focus almost exclusively on their strengths and successes. That can make their triumphs seem almost inevitable, a matter of superhuman qualities. But that doesn’t serve anyone well.

To judge from the archive that Elizebeth left behind, she wanted to share a more complex story about her life. She had a brilliant mind, and she was rich in love and courage, and her papers certainly have a lot to say about her victories—which were even greater than we knew. But her papers also reveal the cracks in her life, her doubts and disappointments and frustrations, and at times even her despair.

These darker moments are part of her story, just as the triumphant ones are, and talking about both is important. We all face our own hard times, and it strengthens us to know that others have, too.

Painting a complex portrait of a woman doesn’t make her any less remarkable. If anything, it makes her triumphs all the greater—and more real. In the end, creating myths about strong women doesn’t make us strong. What makes us strong is sharing the truth about our lives.

Born on this day

Exactly 129 years ago today, on August 26, 1892, Elizebeth Smith Friedman was born on an Indiana farm, the ninth child in her family. Small and frail, she didn’t have an easy start in life, but she rose to become one of the world’s great codebreakers.

I’ve spent years researching her life, and what a ride it’s been! I can’t wait to share it with you when THE WOMAN ALL SPIES FEAR comes out in October.

In the meantime: Happy birthday, Elizebeth! Here is one of my favorite photos of her, taken around 1916, when she got her start in codebreaking.

(Photo courtesy of the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington, VA.)

Behind the scenes

Tags

Television

For ten months now, I’ve been mostly locked down at home. It’s a drag, but it’s the smart thing to do if you’re high risk like me. When I can, I walk in local fields. My excursions are rare, and usually involve clinics and hospitals.

The one glorious exception is my trip last August to a TV studio. I went there to film an interview for an American Experience documentary about Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the amazing real-life female code breaker who is the subject of my next book, The Woman All Spies Fear.

Covid had wrecked our original plans to film in NYC in March, so I figured the documentary would go on without me. But I hadn’t reckoned on the determination of the producer and director, who found a way forward. At a time when local Covid levels were very low, they found an Oxfordshire studio that does work for the BBC and that was taking good precautions. They told me I’d be the only guest in the studio that day, with only a small camera crew at a distance, so I decided to take the risk.

It was a bizarre and wonderful experience. The film crew was terrific, and they’d rigged up a zoom link with the US-based team. That way, the director could interview me as if she were in the studio herself. It worked like a dream…

…except for the wasps.

While the camera was rolling, I was stung not once, but TWICE, by wasps that had found their way into the studio. I got out my Epipen but luckily didn’t need it — though I did need the two packs of frozen mixed veggies the film crew offered me from the freezer. After the second sting, the crew decided to wrap the lower half of me in a black velvet theater curtain, then stand guard over me (at 6 feet, with masks) to swat away anything that buzzed. And that’s how I did the interview, which went on for over six hours. It was quite a day.

If you’re in the US, you can see the film on PBS on Monday night — the first American Experience episode of 2021! It’s called The Codebreaker. I’m just a small part of it, but I think it will be GREAT! Catch it if you can.

A new year & a new cover

Happy New Year, everyone! May it be better than the last one. It’s been a long time since I was so happy to finish off a calendar and move on to the next.

I’ve been lying low with a lupus flare for the last several weeks, but I’m slowly getting better, and today I have something fun to share — the cover for my next book, THE WOMAN ALL SPIES FEAR, out in October from Random House!

The artist is Karolis Strautniekas, whose done some fabulous work in the NYT and the New Yorker, among other places. Often authors don’t have any control over covers, so I was delighted to have some input into this one, and I couldn’t be happier with the final result.

Here’s the book description:

In the summer of 1916, a young English major sets out to solve a mystery about Shakespeare. It involves a rare book, a strange millionaire, and the secret world of codes and ciphers. Within a year, she has transformed herself into one of America’s top code breakers — and that is only the beginning of her brilliant career.            

During World War I, Elizebeth Smith Friedman cracked thousands of messages and trained Army officers in cryptology. In the 1920s, she foiled the plans of mobsters and confronted them in court. By the late 1930s, she was one of the most famous code breakers in the world. In World War II, she hunted Nazi spies.

A woman of many secrets, she was later pushed into the shadows. To discover her full story, you must delve deep, the way a code breaker would, searching for the truth that lies just out of sight. This biography tells the riveting tale of an overlooked American heroine — a real-life adventure, mystery, and love story.

The book can be pre-ordered now on Amazon, and it will soon show up on bookshop.org, too. If you do pre-order it, you have my undying gratitude!

The variety show – and a RA giveaway!

Variety is definitely the spice of this writer’s life. Today I’m digging into crocodile copyedits and researching a 1949 codebreaking crisis … and that’s not all! I’ve also been printing out documents, rehearsing a speech, pondering a research trip, sending out a couple tweets, replying to emails from my publisher, reading a book in my field, and renewing my SCBWI membership. And yes, I’ll be doing a little writing, too. 

My favorite days are the ones where I get to write and write and write. Next best are the days when I dive deep into research and discover something new, or when I get to talk to people about books and reading and the subjects I love best. But I’ve had to accept that writers have to do other things, too — including plenty of paperwork and email. I tell myself it’s a variety show.

On a completely different note, I have some fun news about a Ra giveaway. My lovely publisher and TeachingNet are offering a chance to win one of 10 packs of both Ra the Mighty books — SIGNED copies of RA #1 and ARCs of RA #2. The offer is open till October 31 to US residents and you can enter here.

Please enter if you’d like to win — and good luck! And if you know of anyone — especially a teacher or librarian or youth club — that could use some funny books for readers in 2nd through 5th grades, please pass the link on!

In which my cover is blown

For most of 2019, I’ve been walled up deep in my writing cave, working on two secret book projects.

As readers of Publisher’s Weekly will know, my cover already has been blown on one of them. I’m working on a YA biography of one of America’s first female cryptanalysts, a woman who has fascinated me for years. The book is called SECRETS & SPIES: THE HIDDEN LIFE OF CODEBREAKER ELIZEBETH SMITH FRIEDMAN.

It took me more than two years to find the right way to tell Elizebeth’s story, but I’m glad I persisted, because researching and writing this book has been a glorious experience so far.  A high point was my visit to the wonderful Marshall Library in Virginia, which holds 22 boxes of Elizebeth’s papers, including love letters, encrypted telegrams, and her college diary. My editor is the lovely Lee Wade of Schwartz & Wade, and Random House plans to publish the book in 2021.

My other WIP has been hush-hush till now. But today I’m happy to announce that there’s going to be a third Ra the Mighty mystery. RA AND THE CROCODILE CAPER will be coming to you in Fall 2020!

Juggling two books has made for a fraught six months, and I expect the next year will be pretty pressured, too. I’ve been working very long hours. But I couldn’t say no to either book because I love them both too much.

Luckily it’s working out pretty well. I’m tired but happy, and Elizebeth’s story of war, love, and madness is so intense and all-absorbing that it’s been good to have a little comic relief from Ra.

Wish me luck as I dive back into my writing cave!