The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Winter Orphans by Kristin Beck

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

The Winter Orphans by Kristin Beck A poignant and ultimately triumphant novel based on the incredible true story of children who braved the formidable danger of guarded, wintry mountain passes in France to escape the Nazis, from the acclaimed author of Courage, My Love. Southern France, 1942 In a remote corner of France, Jewish refugee Ella Rosenthal has finally found a safe haven. It has been three years since she and her little sister, Hanni, left their parents to flee Nazi Germany, and they have been pursued and adrift in the chaos of war ever since. Now, they shelter among one hundred other young refugees in a derelict castle overseen by the Swiss Red Cross. Swiss volunteers Rösli Näf and Anne-Marie Piguet uphold a common mission: to protect children in peril. Rösli, a stubborn and resourceful nurse, directs the colony of Château de la Hille, and has created a thriving community against all odds. Anne-Marie, raised by Swiss foresters, becomes both caretaker and friend to the children, and she vows to do whatever is necessary to keep them safe. However, when Germany invades southern France, safeguarding Jewish refugees becomes impossible. Château de la Hille faces unrelenting danger, and Rösli and Anne-Marie realize that the only way to protect the eldest of their charges is to smuggle them out of France. Relying on Rösli's fierce will and Anne-Marie's knowledge of secret mountain paths, they plot escape routes through vast Nazi-occupied territory to the distant border. Amid staggering risk, Ella and Hanni embark on a journey that, if successful, could change the course of their lives and grant them a future.

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. Get ready, 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 roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com i'm here for the brain bleed hi folks welcome to the show we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here. Thanks for making our August great. I mean, I got to tell you, the show every year for the last three years has doubled in size and done in the prior, or let's see, in the last year, it's done prior to what it's done in the prior 11, 12, and 13 years, if that makes any sense.

It's basically doubling and tripling every year for the last three years. And we're about to hit that mark again. And this month already, it's just kind of blowing my mind every time I see it. The show's up 30% this month already, on top of all the record setting it's going to do. The end of August, I think September 1st, we hit the 13-year mark. And so we're feeling very old and we're done. See you. Bye-bye. Now, 13 years.

Holy crap. What a long freaking road it's been. And we certainly appreciate you. And we couldn't have done it without you. In fact, we couldn't have done it without you. That's like really the serious thing. Otherwise, I'd just be sitting in this mic talking to myself all day, which is what we do on, I don't know, Fridays or on the weekends. We're not doing the podcast.

Refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives as always. We certainly appreciate it. Tell them about the show. Clearly some of you have been doing that. Also go to goodreads.com, Fortuna's Chris Voss, hit the bell notification button, youtube.com, Fortuna's Chris Voss, if I didn't say that already. LinkedIn, all the LinkedIn groups and the things we have all over the interwebs. Just search for the Chris Voss show, you'll find him. Today we have an amazing author on the show. She's a multi-book author. She is the author of the newest book called The Winter Orphans by Kristen Beck. The book comes out September, let's see, let me, I lost that real quick, September 13th, 2022. And if you're not keeping

track, I just saw Halloween decorations at the store oh my gosh we're at that moment already surprised i don't see christmas stuff at walmart anyway guys she is the amazing author of this new book we're going to be talking about it coming out she first learned about world war ii from her grandmother who served as a canadian army nurse fell in love with an american soldier in belg, and married him shortly after VE Day. Kristen thus grew up hearing stories about the war and has been captivated by it, often using unsung roles of women in history ever since. She's a former teacher, holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Washington, and a Master in Teaching from

Western, Master's in Teaching from Western, clearly I don't have in teaching from Western, a master's in teaching from Western, clearly I don't have one, from Western Washington University, out of the public school. Kristen lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children. And this is her first novel. Welcome to the show, Kristen. How are you? Good. Great. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for coming. We certainly appreciate you coming on the show. What's your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah. So I have a website. It's www.KristenBeckAuthor.com. And then I also have an Instagram and a Facebook page and the handle for both of those are KristenBeckAuthor.com. So there you go. There you go. And this is your second book,

but this is your first novel. Is that correct? Well, it's my second novel. Okay. So that was reading from the top. Yeah. So you've written two novels. You wrote Courage, My Love and The Winter Orphans. What motivated you to want to write this newest book, The Winter Orphans? Yeah.

So when I was researching for Courage, My Love, I kept coming across stories about people escaping into Switzerland during a war. And I was just kind of interested in that. That just sort of stuck in my head as something I wanted to return to. So when I turned that book in and had a little bit of free time, I went back and researched that. And I stumbled across a story of a young woman named Anne-Marie Piguet, who was a real person. And she was a passeur between France and Switzerland. So she grew up in the forested

regions on the border and her father and her grandfather were Swiss foresters. So she had this tremendous knowledge of that area and of the wilderness and all these trails through the mountains and woods. And she decided to use that during the war to ferry people to safety. Yeah. I bumped into her story and I was just fascinated by that. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, so I grew up doing a lot of hiking and spent time in the mountains as a kid. So it just appealed to me right away

to think of someone using that kind of expertise to save lives. So I followed her story and it led me to a story about a Swiss Red Cross children's colony in Southern France where she ended up working. And all of those children, of course, were in grave danger. And so that is what sort of launched

this book into existence. And would you call it a historical novel? It's a historical fiction novel. Yeah. So it's based on real people and events, but I had to fictionalize quite a lot of it because the historical record is spotty. And so I filled it out with my imagination and turned it into a book. There you go. It makes for a great novel. It's wonderful, some of these stories. And it is sad that sometimes we don't get the full recorded history of this.

But war is a hell of a time. And a lot gets lost in it. But there were so many heroes. And so they were helping, what's the word I'm looking for, Underground Railroad sort of thing to help people? Yeah, yeah. So the Swiss Red Cross set up children's colonies across France to care for displaced children. And this particular one had about 100 Jewish refugee children. They had fled from Germany and Austria on the eve of war and eventually ended up in Southern France living in this derelict chateau,

which was tucked into like the rugged mountains of the Pyrenees. So that's where all these children lived and they had Swiss caretakers. And at first, in the beginning of the war, they felt that they could live out the war there and that they would be safe. But then in 1942, Germany occupied all of France and all of those children were in danger. Yeah. I mean, that was definitely a moving war where you're just like going refugees to refugees to country to country. You know, hopefully you don't see something like that develop what's going on in Russia. But there was a chance that could happen where, you know, a war that spreads, you know, you constantly have refugees being pushed in different places. And, you know, then war that spreads, you know, you constantly have refugees being pushed in different places. And, you know, then there's the, you know, you're in a strange place.

You're not home. I mean, I'm sure that's a that's a challenge to have. What were some of the some of the research you did that you put into the book that that made you, you know, develop the story? Yeah. So I started researching this in late 2019, which was unfortunate because the writing of the book took place almost exclusively during COVID. So I wasn't able to travel to the region, which was something that I'd hoped to do. But I did have just piles of books that I read about this. I read basically everything I could find about this group of children and the women who took care of them. And I even read, I wouldn't claim to speak French necessarily, but I do have some rusty French. And so I read some books in French. Yeah. I had a memoir sent to me from Switzerland that was in French. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So it was, I accessed a lot of source materials and there were quite a few memoirs and diaries that were involved in this story. So I did get lots of firsthand accounts of what it was like for the survivors. Wow. Yeah. So lots and lots of reading is basically what it involved. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far.

We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company.

Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show. And be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. And what did you, I imagine it seems kind of obvious, but the winter orphans, I mean, I imagine that's in reference to them. Was there, was that, were they called that in France or was that just your title? Yeah, they weren't called that, but the children ended up embarking on some of

these journeys over the Walton Passes in the winter. And those wintery conditions sort of defined some of their experiences. So when we were talking about titles, that just kept coming up. And then, of course, it's a bit of a metaphor, too, for winter being a dark and cold season of the year. And, of course, the war and this experience for the kids would have been a dark and cold season of their lives. So it seemed to fit the book on multiple levels. Yeah. When you fleshed out your characters and stuff, were there people in your

close relative thing that you thought of? Some people have referenced movie stars when they've written books. Not very often, but they'll be thinking of someone who's a movie star. Any people that you used to flesh out the characters or build characters on? Yeah, sure. I always think about my grandmother.

My grandmother was a nurse in World War II. And so she actually was a nurse on some of the most notorious battlefronts. She was right behind the invasion of Normandy. Wow. Yeah. Set up field hospitals right behind those front lines. And so she was in Normandy. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Set up field hospitals right behind those front lines. And so she was in Normandy for the entire summer and then traveled with, she was a Canadian, Canadian army nurse. And so she traveled with the Canadian army up through and eventually

ended up in Belgium. So she had just incredible stories of, of what it was like to work and live through the war. And I grew up very close to her, but I always tell people that she was tiny. She was like 80 pounds, this tiny little lady, and she was firming and bubbly and adorable. And everyone that knew her and didn't know this part of her would have never guessed that she had this completely unexpected, courageous background. And so I think that's what draws me to these kinds of stories. And I always think about her. I think about these hidden stories of what women did during the war and how oftentimes if you think just a little bit, you find that there are these just incredible stories that maybe didn't make it into the

history books. Yeah. And, and, you know, it sounds like your grandmother was quite the person. She, she served in the Canadian army as a Canadian army nurse. And then you grew up hearing just lots of these stories. I mean, I can imagine how rich they were. I think we talked in the, in the green room before the show about how, you know, not a lot of people want to talk about war that go to war. I had friends that went to the Vietnam war and they don't like to talk about it. They just, they're just like that, that book is closed. But your grandmother shared a lot of great stories. She even met her husband and married him. Kind of an interesting love story where you almost could write that as a great romance story. You know, she, she finds an American soldier, not in America, but over in Belgium serving

and then, and then marries him. That's a great story in itself. That would be a good read, too, as well. Yeah, it is. It's a pretty amazing story. Not to push you into a third book that you don't want to write. Maybe you don't want to write that story. All right.

Stop, Chris. Give me a break already. I just got this one published. One at a time. So, but yeah, I mean, she must have been quite the character to sit and listen to her stories. She was pretty amazing. And the group of women that was basically her cohort, these Canadian Army nurses, they were told when they returned to North America that it was time to put all of that behind them, focus on hearth and home. And they really weren't encouraged to talk about the grittier parts of their experience

because it was, it was unwomanly. And so many of them didn't. And then when they became 80, 90 years old, suddenly they did. Very much like my grandmother. I love people that, that can spin great stories and keep great stories. I mean, stories are, you know, it used to be that in, well, starting in Africa with only tribalism, there were griots and that would, you know, keep verbal histories of our life. You know, everything is stories that we do. The books we consume, the films we see, the TV shows we watch, everything are stories

and entwined in those stories. I use the word I'm very proud of, entwined in those stories. I sound like I might have a master's. Maybe not because I'm going to wreck it with the rest of that. So anyway, with that segue, entwined in their stories is life lessons where people go, you know, you learn stuff. It didn't take me until I was about 50 to really learn that lesson as to how important stories were.

I kept stories and told stories, but I didn't realize just the quality and impact of stories and collecting them and recognize them as great life lessons and inspiring motivational lessons as well. Yeah, I think so for sure. Yeah. It's great that you shared them. I think if I recall rightly, there was a story of how a lot of Israel women soldiers that fought in the wars, they did the same thing when they returned to home base in Israel. They just completely went back to maternal mothers and never talked about the war.

And so I think that came from the gal we talked about earlier in the green room over the Jewish book. But it's great stories of what goes out and of course, lost history and different things like that. Any scenarios you want to tease out in the stories or maybe some of the different scenarios that we can give out, maybe tease some suspense a little bit? Sure, yeah.

So the book actually has three point of view characters. That's a woman named Anne-Marie Piguet, which we have mentioned, who was the Swiss purser. And then there was another woman named Ruzlineth, who also lived. And she was the director of this chateau full of children. So her job was to manage it. And when the children arrived there, she worked with them, very much with them,

to create a really thriving community. So they were sort of tucked into the wilderness in this old chateau, and they refurbished it. They grew their own food. They chopped wood. And the children in their memoirs remembered that time as kind of the safe harbor during the war. But in 1942, the French capitulated with the Germans and ordered deportations of foreign Jews from France. And so early on in the book, the French police come and raid the chateau and take 44 of the children away to an internment camp. And that's kind of what kicks off this story.

Oh, wow. Yeah. And when I ran into that, Ruesli, at first I was just going to have the story be about Anne-Marie Piguet. She was going to be the lead. And then I bumped into this story about Ruesli, and she was just incredible. I won't give too much away, but after they took her children from the chateau, she called them her children. She jumped on a bicycle that was half broken and rode it after the retreating bus.

And she ended up sort of chasing them down. So she was this remarkable young woman as well. And I think maybe one of my favorite characters ever. And then the third point of view character is a young girl named Ella Rosenthal. And she is a fictional character, but she's heavily inspired by the real kids that lived there. So she starts the story at age 17, and she has a younger sister at the chateau that she feels responsible for. So it also follows her story of what it's like to be one of these Jewish refugee children living in the Swiss Red Cross children's colony during the war.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, this should be pretty amazing, inspiring story. I think people are going to probably come away inspired by it. Anything more we want to touch on or tease about the book before we go? Yeah. You know, I always tell people I wrote this during COVID, like I mentioned. And sometimes when people see like the cover, they'll say it's a beautiful cover. People are universally saying that, but it looks like it might be a really sad story.

And so what I always mention there is I do think that it's a story that might inspire tears when you're reading it, but it's ultimately a really hopeful story. And when I was writing it, I was just completely swept away by it. It's just a really, the history behind this novel is very captivating and it completely swept me away. And I think that even though this is a story that definitely has its sad moments, it's really an uplifting story in the end. It's very hopeful because it's about people. I mean, the things that these women did, they were so courageous in the face of just staggering risk. And so it is, it's very inspiring.

There you go. Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness of Desmond Tutu. And it's certainly what we all look for in life. Thank you for being on the show. Give us your dot coms if you can find you on the interwebs, Kristen. Sure. So www.kristenbeckauthor.com is my webpage. When I have a contact sheet there, if you'd like to get in touch with me, I can always reach out. And then I'm on Facebook and Instagram as well. And the handles for both of those are Kristen Beck author. There you go.

Thanks for coming on. Kristen has been wonderful to see you visit with you and talk with you. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. There you go. Thanks for tuning into my audience. Be sure to go to youtube.com for chest,

Chris Voss, goodreads.com for chest, Chris Voss, all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and all those places you can find wherever great media is presented or not. Maybe, I don't know. I don't know about that. I don't know. I'm not going to knock around social media sites. That TikTok's kind of weird. I don't know about that. Anyway, guys, be sure to order up the book. The Winter Orphans comes out September 13th, 2022 by Kristen Beck. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe as always, and be good to each other. We'll see you next time.