The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Last Lifeboat by Hazel Gaynor

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

The Last Lifeboat by Hazel Gaynor https://amzn.to/3MzsQ7M Inspired by a remarkable true story, a young teacher evacuates children to safety across perilous waters, in a moving and triumphant new novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor. 1940, Kent: Alice King is not brave or daring—she’s happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she’d long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher—to help evacuate Britain’s children overseas. 1940, London: Lily Nichols once dreamed of using her mathematical talents for more than tabulating the cost of groceries, but life, and love, charted her a different course. With two lively children and a loving husband, Lily’s humble home is her world, until war tears everything asunder. With her husband gone and bombs raining down, Lily is faced with an impossible choice: keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme, where safety awaits so very far away. When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other—one on land, the other at sea—will quickly become one another’s very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Strap yourself in. keep your hands arms and

legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from thechrisvossshow.com thechrisvossshow.com welcome to chrisfossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you coming by the big show. It's always wonderful to have you guys because without you, we'd just be sitting here talking in a mic after 14 years. And that would be really awful after 14 years to be doing this. Anyway, guys, be sure, as always, to refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to youtube.com, fortresschrissfoss, linkedin.com, fortresschrissfoss. Or, I'm relatives. Go to YouTube.com, Fortress Christmas, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Christmas.

I'm sorry, Goodreads.com, Fortress Christmas. And also, we're trying to be cool on TikTok, which is not working and probably will never work. But we're going to try because those crazy kids are over there and we're trying to be hip. Hip? Is that even the word that kids say anymore? I just think I dated myself. Anyway, we have an amazing author on the show she has her newest book i think it's 10 or 11 we're discussing this before the show we're

just going to call it 11 we're going to round up because she broke the 10 mark uh it's called the last lifeboat it comes out june 13th 2023 holy crap we halfway through the year already oh my gosh people are watching this 10 years from now going, what is he talking about? Hazel Ganor is on the show with us today. She's going to be talking to us about her amazing new book and a lot of the other stuff she's written. We'll get a plug in for all of her works there. She is an award-winning New York Times, USA Today, Globe and Mail, and Irish Times best-selling historical novelist. We can't forget the Irish times, uh,

her debut novel, the girl who came home was awarded the 2015 R and a historical novel of the year. And her novels have been shortlisted for the 2016 and 2020 Irish book awards. There's a lot of Irish going on today. I feel like having some whiskey, uh,

the 2019 HWA gold Crown Award as well. And the 2020 RNA Historical Novel of the Year. And the 2021 Grand Prix du Roman Historique. Wow, that sounds prestigious. It sounds like also a racing car thing. Her latest novel, When We Were Young and Brave, The Bird in the Bamboo Cage, I think it's a biography of my life on Fridays, was a national bestseller in the USA. She's co-written novels with Heather Webb, and they've all been published to critical acclaim.

And if you think otherwise, she'll tell you otherwise. I don't know what that means. Winning and being shortlisted, her books have been for several international awards. Welcome to the show, Hazel. How are you? I'm great. Thank you. What an intro.

Well, you know, we try. We try to punch up the bios. Beef it up. Beef it up. Yeah. Beef it up. And then people after the show are like, what the fuck did you do to my bio? I think we both need a whiskey after that.

I feel like pressure. Are you Irish? You seem to be really popular in Ireland. Well, I live in Ireland. I'm actually an Irish citizen. My husband's Irish, and I got my citizenship two years ago. I'm kind of officially adopted by Ireland now, which is great. Well, it sounds like they've taken you on and adopted you as one of their own.

So, I mean, good for them. It's a great, beautiful place too. It's gorgeous. gorgeous and you see i kept getting shortlisted for all the awards so they felt they had to you know make it official so that that's where we're at so yeah it's a gorgeous country um great fun and uh yeah i'm officially part of the gang now there you go so uh what motivates you want to write your latest book here, The Last Lifeboat? Well, all of my books are inspired by history. So I'm always sort of like a magpie. I'm always looking at documentaries and picking up bits of the past, I suppose, from wherever I am. And this story just absolutely blew me away.'s um a really incredible story of survival

at sea and I've always been really drawn to those human endurance stories you know I kind of get fascinated by people in peril and how do they respond how do they cope um and this is set during the second world war when a ship taking evacuees children from Liverpool in England to Canada was torpedoed in the Atlantic. And there was a lifeboat full of survivors that had believed to have been sunk and lost. So for a period of time, spoiler alert, these survivors didn't know if help was coming or what their outcome was going to be. And it's such a human drama. And I just immediately knew the alerts went off and I was like, I have to write this story. There you go. You know, I think, I think we've all kind of envisioned what that must be like to be on a lifeboat and you're in, you know, you don't know if help's

coming, you know, the big ship is sunk and then you're on board with people that are in a very panicked situation. And, and, uh, you know, as we saw with COVID, you know, sometimes emergencies can bring out the worst in people and sometimes not the best. Yeah. And, and, and isn't that the way? And I think we're all secretly fascinated. It's like the classic, when you come across a road traffic accident and it's like, you don't want to look, but you look and we all do it. Right. Um, and you're, you're sort of it's the morbid fascination of what would I do in that situation? Would I be the person who organises everyone, the fight or flight situation? Could I help other people? Do you run away or do you run towards? You know, and I think great fiction in any format makes us

answer that question and that's why I really really loved this story um and any any situation like that that makes us think what if and what what would I do would I be the hero or would I be the you know the guy at the back saying you you guys get on with it? Yeah, this has always fascinated me. What makes people run into danger? You know, like 9-11. What makes people run into a building that could come down and did come down? What makes people in extraordinary events become incredible leaders and stand out? We had somebody on the show who talked to men Mandela when the assassination of,

uh, of one of the leaders of, uh, that was trying to get our party to return, uh, you know, and different things like that. John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, uh, Martin Luther King, you know, all these people that in extraordinary moments, uh, chose leadership and chose to, to, uh, what I think Abraham Lincoln, uh uh said are better angels was it abraham lincoln that said it um yeah and and and then sometimes uh we're not so good yeah and i think you know that's there's so many and and you know in recent years i mean you mentioned 9 11 you

mentioned covid and i think you know we often look at events like the Second World War and think, oh, we, you know, we haven't experienced any life changing events like that. And we very much have. And I'm really conscious as a parent of how do you tell your kids about that. And I watched a news report after one of the London tube bombings. And it talked about somebody saying, they tell their children to look to the people who are helping, you know, that not all people are bad. Bad people did this, but there are good people. And there will always be people, as you say, running to help. And I think that's really important to remember.

And, of course, history, we forget those people who look slightly odd in black and white photographs are exactly the same as you and I and how did we respond to COVID and how hard was it to be separated from loved ones exactly what parents adults everybody went through in World War II so time really doesn't change how we respond as people and I think that's why I love kind of dipping into history because yes, it's set in the past, but the human response to conflict and crisis is evergreen. It doesn't matter what era we're in. It's that same sense of, you know, the crisis responds, how do we respond? So yeah, I found it really, really interesting.

There you go. So you've got, I think, two protagonist characters in the book. Tell us a little bit about whoever that is and the protagonist in it. Yeah. So The Last Lifeboat is told from two points of view, two women. Alice, who is a teacher slash librarian who has volunteered, essentially essentially to take these children across on this difficult journey and she finds herself in the lifeboat with other survivors so she's the one with who we see the peril of the situation everybody's in in the lifeboat the contrasting point of view is a mother, Lily, who has sent two of her children on the evacuee ship. And she's in London experiencing the bombing raids of the Blitz.

And she doesn't know what has happened to her children, because obviously, back in 1940, communication was very different and much slower. There was no cell phones. We didn't get our news off twitter you know so it was you know impossible to know exactly what had happened so we're seeing this event from two very different points of view and it's really about how an event like that can bring people together and how do they each respond and how do our fates intersect in those moments of crisis and Alice is inspired by a real woman Mary Cornish who this whole event is based on something that happened and Mary Cornish was the inspiration for Alice. Lily is entirely from my imagination because I wanted to have that contrasting point of view and just show how an ordinary working you know

sort of mother in London had to think about shall I send my children away with the dangers that that brings or shall I keep them in London with me and the dangers that that brings? I mean, Sophie's choice, right? It's impossible. So the drama and the tension is high. It's high stakes. A lot of readers have told me it's a real page turner because there is that ongoing tension of who's going to get out of this. So just incredible. There you go. And they've got a boat of women and children, right? And children, I mean, that's got to be even harder because you can't really so just incredible and they've got a boat of women and children and right and children I mean that's got to be even harder because you can't really reason with children they're upset

they're emotional they're you know they're in a situation they can see that parents are stressed and people are stressed and Alice sort of almost unwillingly finds herself as the only woman in the lifeboat looking after the surviving children that are with her um whereas the men sort of become like we said earlier the

the leaders the organizers the physical um help if you like so it was really interesting to study that sort of male female dynamic in a crisis as well. And the children, again, are very much inspired by the real children who experienced this and were just incredibly resilient. They wrote about it as adults and recalled what it was like those days and nights in the lifeboat and how this woman, Mary Cornish, kept their spirits up and she told them stories to distract them from the storm

that was lashing the lifeboat with waves. I mean, just, again, you know, we can't imagine being in that situation ourselves, but to put a young child in that, it just adds a whole other level of emotion. And as I say, this is all based on true events. Fact is always stranger than fiction, right? Yeah. It sounds like you did a lot of research on it,

and there was quite a lot of documentation and people writing about their experience. So you had a lot to delve from and develop your story from. Yeah. A lot of firsthand, which is of gold dust to a writer, if you can get primary source material, the people who were there, and of course at the time people weren't encouraged to talk about experiences like this, it was very much the classic keep calm and carry on, and there was, yeah, there was no was no counseling there wasn't any suggestion of mental

health um and people came out of these life-changing events traumatized so really it's no surprise that i think in later life they did want to talk about it and write down their memories um of those events and it's it's just incredible to be able to access that now and bring that authenticity to an event that I've obviously never experienced myself. I mean, you sort of use their memories to fuel the imagination. Just incredible to read, yeah. Yeah.

And can you tease out how long they're on the lifeboat? I know we can't really tell the ends and middles of most novels. Yeah. Spoiler. Spoiler. Yeah, I mean, it's there on the jacket in some editions. So eight days that this lifeboat had – actually, parents were informed that their children had been lost. Wow.

And yet they were still alive, but believed there was a miscounting of the lifeboats that were recovered. You can imagine the chaos in the aftermath. So just this, all hope is lost, and yet just incredible. Yeah. And you bring up hope.

I mean, it's that old adage too that hope springs eternal i mean without it i mean we're kind of lost as a humanity and uh and and yeah you're i can imagine going through just a day 24 hours in in a lifeboat you're like i don't know if anybody's come to save us i don't know if we've got enough food or water um there's sharks and uh you know you're back in those days where you know they didn't have technology you're not like well i'm sure that some uh you know uh air force thing's gonna fly over and find us and the wreckage and you know some uh radar will see some boat float i mean even nowadays you know you look at the recent plane that went down a few years ago i think it was in malaysia they never found the plane and you're like wait with all this technology we

still can't find stuff in the middle of an ocean yeah um you know titanic is still a big thing i don't know if you saw recently the the new scans they did at titanic i mean we're still fascinated by this stuff but the dynamic of what people go through I mean imagine lots of drama because in your book because you know and there's all sorts of you know people go through up and down and it's a very emotional situation because you don't have control that's it and I think that's the crux of it it's the lack of control you know and we we all hate that don't we and of course that that that hope does spring eternal so the initial response of everybody is oh you know they'll come and get us they'll rescue us the other ships that were in

our convoy will turn around and come and get us but shipping laws at the time prevented any ships returning to a site where it was believed there were u-boats in the area because obviously they're next. Wow. Yeah. So the rescue was very much curtailed and very much like the Titanic. And obviously that was where I started my writing career, writing The Girl Who Came Home, which is a novel of the Titanic. So I've been fascinated with disaster at sea for a long time. And again, you know, the miscommunications there, which meant the Carpathia was the closest ship, but was four hours away. So nobody survived in the water. And like you say, you know, technology, even looking for the Malaysian Airlines flight, I watched a documentary about that recently. And they said, it wasn't about a needle in a haystack they didn't even know where the haystack was you know it's we forget how massive oceans are um so of course yes in in the last lifeboat in

my imagination the conversations the first few hours are very much about oh help will be coming it's all okay everybody's very calm but how that unravels when the next morning comes along and another night starts to fall and there's another night of absolute terror um and hope on the other side yeah hope hope of my mother lily who despite being told her children uh were on the ship firmly believes they've both survived. And it's that sort of mother's instinct or refusal to believe when everybody's telling you there's no hope. She insists there is always hope. So yeah, it's quite astonishing. I remember the beginning of COVID was a very dark time. And one of my friends wrote,

there's two things you do right now one be a lifter and if you can't be a lifter go find a lifter and it was an interesting moment to me it actually changed the the the chris voss show after 10 years of it was you know we're 14 years old now in august but uh we were 10 years old then and we mostly uh you know interviewed ceos and tech people and stay in the technology space and uh and covid when i heard that i said we need to use the show to be a lifter and we opened the scope of the show to all authors and and everyone and it really changed it really changed everything for me for us but we we built the show to be more of a lifter and and so i love

books like yours because it kind of brings forth that dynamic of the human element of where some people are lifters, some people need lifting, uh, some people maybe, you know, like some of the characters in your book, they maybe didn't have, maybe weren't in the place where they were ready to be brave or daring and maybe they find their footing in that, in that field. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a brilliant way of putting it. And I think so often people turn a crisis into a force for good, and that was seen so often through COVID. And I think it's our closest way of understanding an event like the Second World War where community routine was totally disrupted, we couldn't see loved ones, we couldn't travel, that complete element of the

unknown. So it makes an event like as distant as 1940 suddenly make a bit more sense in how people responded to that and yeah I think I've said over the years you know I've often looked at tragedy and that that's where I've been inspired and obviously you end up reading about some very harrowing very emotional situations but it's incredible how at the same time it's like a parallel with every crisis and drama and terrible situation. There is always a running track of goodness and kindness and hope and inspiration. And it's like almost impossible to write one without the other, which is a wonderful thing to be able to say, you know, that you do see the goodness in people in the worst of times. You know, and we've all experienced that recently. And I think it's amazing that,

like you say, your show changed and you've continued with that. And that's often how things do change, isn't it? That it's the worst possible time that makes the change and then it becomes a better thing or a different thing. And it's quite amazing how often that happens. Definitely. I mean, so many books got written over COVID, and there were books on lifters, on how to live your life better, and, of course, books that entertain and form and motivate and inspire like yours. You know, what you talked about is kind of a microcosm.

The Last Lightboat is kind of a microcosm, a tide pool, if you will, of humanity and how we perform in the worst and best stuff. So I love the inspiration behind it. Evidently, Lily Nichols, your one character, her husband was gone with bombs raining down. Do you want to tease out if he was still alive or was he at war? It's up to you to tease that if you want to. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I won't conclude

that particular arc, but the men within the last lifeboat in a time of war, I was very conscious of considering alternate points of view. So I think a lot of the time we, considering alternate points of view so I think a lot of the time we well first of all I think we think about war as a very male thing which is why it's been amazing to think about it from female point of view but of course many men immediately wanted to do their bit signed up and you know hailed as heroes and, you know, rightly so. However, of course, there's always an exception to that rule. And many men conscientiously objected on grounds of morals. Others were involved and yet were deeply disturbed by what they were being asked to do um and were traumatized and you know

i said earlier about mental health and how we didn't talk about ptsd the way we do now and yet the men in 1940 were expected to you know literally all man up put on a uniform get in an airplane fight bomb whatever was required so my male characters, one of whom is Lily's husband, has a very different story. And one of the men who's in the lifeboat with Alice also has a very different story, as does her brother. And I really felt it was a conscious decision to do that, that I didn't want to just put in another brave war hero.

I wanted to consider, this feels to me like a very different book about the war. And so therefore, I wanted to try and tell other people's stories as well, because they're just as valid. There you go. I mean, it's the classic thing. Men go off to war, we're expendable. You know, it's always women and children first, because we have to preserve the future of the propagation of the species. And women, you know, you see women through history that fight to protect their children, their future, their children. I mean, usually when women are off at war, being run over by tribes, you know, women have had to be at behind to take care of the kids because the kids and them and their wombs are the future of the propagation of species with women men are disposable and so uh you know you saw like you see that today i see that with immigrants that

come to this country with women bringing their children here and they and you know afghanistan i think was the the one thing that always sticks out in my mind seeing mothers throw their babies to US soldiers and for a mother to give up her child so that child could have a better life is extraordinary when you think of the psychology behind it

and the love for a child you know my mother would I mean she'd probably do anything for me. She'd probably give her life for me. And mothers are extraordinary. Yeah, and I'm a mother myself. And I think, you know, and I have two boys.

So interesting that I've looked at that particular experience of war from a different point of view. And, you know, what an unimaginable thing to think about your son heading off to war, which actually is part of my family history. So my great uncle was lost in the Second World War and I actually have letters that his mother, my great grandmother, wrote to him when he'd been recorded as missing in action. And it's unbearable. It's heartbreaking

to read her agony at not knowing where he is, and he never came home. And that piece of family history, that real sense of loss and agony of a woman, you know, in my family circle, has again really helped me to portray that on the page. And I think, you know, in my family circle has again really helped me to portray that on the page. And I think, you know, women were left to make very difficult decisions in the last life. But it was really the women. There was a lot of propaganda. You know, posters said mothers do the right thing. Send your children away. Yeah. How on earth do you wave your child off on a ship, not knowing when we now know the war ended in 1945? They didn't know how, when, if it was going to end or what the world would look like at that point.

And some children who were evacuated never did come home because either their parents were lost in the process or just life had moved on, life had changed. So as I said, just to Sophie's choice, it's an impossible decision. And it's really that, I suppose, futility in some ways of which way do you go? And there's a bear in both directions. The lesser of two evils sometimes. And this happened a lot with U-boats,

you know, submarines. Germany was big on this and they were sinking a lot of boats. And, you know, so you're like, do we stay in London or do we make a run for cover? And then they're facing the thing. So a beautiful story

and, you know, something that brings to light human nature and shines light on doing good and evil. And hopefully sets, you know, we learn from history. We do, yeah. I mean, history has the awful habit of repeating itself. But, you know, I do think we can learn a lot from the past, and a lot of it is very familiar, actually. You know, they say the past is a foreign place. They do things differently there. Not so differently, actually, when it comes down to our emotional response.

We're all the same in that respect. And stories are great because they're how we learn. They're the owner's manual to life, telling stories and being griots, if you will, as they used to call them in Africa, the storytellers, the historians, because that's how we learn about life. And maybe, you know, what would I do in this situation? Maybe then when you're confronted with that situation, you do better. Well, anything more you want to tease out hazel on the on the book well i honestly i mean you've you've you've given me some amazing uh sound bites which a book about humility is is and the human uh the human response to to drama is really i suppose the heart of this book it's it's the consequence of what if. Do I stay? Do I go? And that in a time of war,

there's really never going to be a great outcome. And I just hope that people will enjoy a slightly different story of the Second World War. And that really, as I said, at the very top of the show, it's more a story about human endurance and the the human spirit which i think we can all take a lot away from and respond to there you go hope springs eternal uh hazel give us your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs please uh very simple hazel gainer.com is my website. I'm on Twitter, Instagram at Hazel Gainer. Haven't delved into TikTok yet, but I believe the kids are very much taking over.

So maybe I should step into BookTok at some point. But yeah, my kids are mortified at the whole idea of their mom being anywhere near TikTok. That's the whole point of being a parent. Scar your children. Give them something to talk to. Give them something to empower them. They got to have something to talk to in a psychiatrist's office.

Pass it down. You know, all that sort of good stuff. Thank you very much, Hazel, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Great to talk. Thank you so much. There you go. And thanks to my audience for tuning in.

Order up the book wherever fine books are sold. Remember, stay out of the Zallyway bookstores. You might need a tetanus shine or you might get mugged. Go to Amazon.com wherever fine books are sold. Remember, stay on the Zallyway bookstores. You might need a tetanus shine or you might get mugged. Go to Amazon.com wherever fine books are sold. June 13, 2023, you can pre-order it up and be the first one on your book club to say you read it so you got bragging rights. The Last Lifeboat is out. You can get that at your local bookstore. Support your local bookstore, too.

I should throw a plug in for them. Anyways, go to goodreads.com for just Christmas. YouTube.com for just Christmas. LinkedIn.com for just Christmas. We're all over the damn web. What do you people want from me already? And we're on TikTok. And I guess we've got to join whatever's new next week.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time. And that should have