historical fiction

Author interview: historical fiction author Heike Wolf

/ Caron Allan

It’s been forever since I managed to nab someone unlucky enough to be interviewed by me, but what could be better than a chat with a writer of historical fiction? Heike Wolf is the author of a number of books that tell the story of people living through different eras of German history, and she has a real flair for bringing the past to life and making the characters so real and relatable. How does she do that? And what is her inspiration? Let’s find out!

Hi Heike, and welcome. It’s great to have you here.

You and I have got to know one another through the amazing work you’ve done in editing the German translations (translated by the brilliant Stef Mills) of my Dottie Manderson mysteries. And although we’ve chatted in the past, I almost forgot that you had an actual life with other interests – and a day job as an author.

What kind of books do you write? And what is it about them that fires your inspiration?

I write historical fiction. I have been a history buff for as long as I can remember and when I read or hear about historic events, I’m immediately involved emotionally: trying to picture, to actually feel, how people experienced these events, how they felt, what they thought, what the world looked, sounded like, smelled like at that point. It’s the people behind the history that fascinate me.

When I plan a new book I first read about the historic background – and by that I mean reading everything I can get my hands on, immersing myself in that time period. Then, the ideas come automatically, the historic events fuel and shape the story.

The two books about the Schönau family were also inspired by my own family history. I grew up with the many life stories I heard from grandparents, my great-aunt and others, most of them tragic, and they not only made me realize how lucky I am for my sheltered life but also inspired me to weave some of them into this two-part novel about a German family.

I love history too – it was studying texts from the past that made me realise that, in simple terms, the people of the past were real, and living, and ‘just like us’ – once I grasped that, I found history deeply absorbing. But as individuals we also have a past.

So what were your earliest influences? What did you read as a child?

My mother read to me for hours before I could read myself, authors like Astrid Lindgren and some of the most popular authors of German children’s books. My English grandmother gave me Enid Blyton books as soon as I could read, and I devoured them. Of course I then wanted to go to boarding school and solve mysteries …

Actually I read so much that my parents were on a perpetual book hunt for me. They asked friends, relatives and neighbours if they had children’s books I could borrow. They scoured flea markets, my mother walked to the library bus with me when it was in town and of course I had a long wish list that consisted exclusively of books. I remained faithful to Enid Blyton for most of my earlier childhood. When I was eleven, I saw “Gone with the Wind” on television and wanted to read that book quite urgently. That started my historical fiction infatuation. It consisted mainly of books about American history, with a bit of Tolstoi and other Russians sprinkled in. In my later teens I discovered Dickens, Poe and the marvellous Goethe. Yes, I was a nerdy child, I admit it.

I wanted to go to boarding school and solve mysteries too! Though I was less interested in studying…

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m researching Prussia during the Napoleonic era for the third book in my series about a village in Prussia (in German) and I’m currently translating the second book about the Schönau family into English. This will accompany the family from 1934 to 1957 – through dictatorship, war and a divided Germany.

Speaking of the Schönau family, I know that this week, you’ve just released your first English translation of the first book of the two, A Citizen of All Times which I highly recommend for an insightful, absorbing read, and so what can we look forward to in the future from you?

In German, I want to write some more books for my Prussian series – it covers a fictional village near Berlin throughout the most eventful periods of Prussia between 1685 and 1945.

I also have plans to write a novel or series about Germans moving to the United States, so I’m gathering ideas for that.

As for English versions: After the translation of the second book about the Schönau family, I might translate my trilogy about an American family between 1832 and 1932 at some point.

Like most authors, you’re also an avid reader, who are your favourite authors?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – a masterful way with words and a fascinating character in itself.

Charles Dickens – he created the most unique characters and had a talent to combine humour and tragedy in his very own way.

Erich Maria Remarque – such elegant prose. Never a word too much, wonderful mastery of language and one of the most important chroniclers of the 20th century in Germany.

Edgar Allan Poe – a dark mind, which he put to thrilling literary use.

And what do you do when you’re not reading?

Hiking through the forests and being enslaved by my two cats. Reading. Doing puzzles while listening to historical or true crime documentaries. Doing volunteer work for our local castle.

Lol I’m glad I’m not the only cat-servant around! Do you have a writing process as such, and if so, what is it?

I research the history first and see what story ideas result from that. Then I mull these ideas over – preferably while hiking – until I have a beginning and a broad idea of where the story goes. I start writing and see where it takes me. I rarely develop characters thoroughly in advance because I noticed that they develop on their own while I write. I see where they take me and usually it makes sense to follow that path.

Then I see how the story develops and plot step by step – preferably while hiking even more.

I have no set writing times, I noticed it doesn’t work if I force myself to write. So I write when I feel like it (which fortunately is often).

What single piece of advice do you wish someone had given you 15 years ago?

Most of the time things turn out much better than you fear.

That’s very true. And fear can stop us from achieving so much.

Coming back to books, do you regularly reread certain books?

I read Goethe’s Faust about once every two years. Then, there are some novels that touched or / and impressed me for various reasons, so I occasionally read them again. Several of them from the authors I mentioned above as my favourite ones but also many others.

And lastly, where can readers find you?

I’m not very active on social media, but I do occasionally post on Instagram: www.instagram.com/heike_wolf_historischeromane

My own website is mainly in German (but these days it’s so easy to have websites translated right in the browser) and contains information about my books and articles relating to some of the historic topics I covered in my books: www.menschenlebengeschichte.com

Thank you so much, Heike, it’s been fascinating talking with you, and I wish you great success with all your ventures.

Brief bio of Heike Wolf:

Heike Wolf studied to be a lawyer, but she has been fascinated by books and writing ever since she can remember. She started to write fiction as soon as she knew how to write at all (the quality of her works has improved by then). The passion for history came a few years later and so the ground was set for writing historic fiction after she had first focused on non-fiction books for expats to Germany (“Coming to and Living in Germany”, “Cross-cultural musings about Germany”).

Her family history extends across many countries, and she has also lived in various countries herself, so it’s not surprising that her family history and the countries she loves play a role in many of her books. Her two books about the German family Schönau were in large parts inspired by her great-aunt’s life. As Heike Wolf, who grew up with an English mother and a German father, also does literary translations, she translated the first Schönau book into English and is currently working on the translation of the second.

Her novels are characterized by careful research and the skillful interweaving of the historical background with the lives of her characters ­– “people live history”.

Carry on reading below to find out a bit more about Heike’s new book A Citizen of All Times out this week in English:

The story of a German family in the most turbulent time of the last century.

Volume 1:

While Charlotte plans her eightieth birthday and follows the demonstrations and upheavals in the East Germany, she thinks back to her childhood and youth in Leipzig, where she was born in 1909 and grew up with two siblings. Their sheltered childhood is shaken by World War I, revolution and a completely changed world. During the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic, in a politically unstable time, the three Schönau children take their first steps into adult life. While Charlotte’s sister Dorchen enjoys the liberal cultural life in Berlin, her brother Heinrich is drawn to the wrong circles. Charlotte herself experiences the versatility of being a university student and suffers the first painful loss of her life.

In the second volume, the darkest period of German history has descended upon the country. Each of the Schönau siblings has a different way of getting through the Nazi dictatorship and World War II. Dorothea gets to know the ugly face of the new regime, has to make sacrifices and undergo fundamental life changes. Heinrich has found his place and is leaving behind those who have accompanied him. Charlotte focuses on her family and tries to ignore unpleasant truths. The war brings unimaginable losses and forces almost everybody to make difficult decisions. At the end of the war, the family finds itself facing new trials.
Charlotte’s eightieth birthday on November 9, 1989 ends in a way she would never have thought possible.

You can find both eBook and paperback versions here:

Amazon USA

Amazon UK

Amazon Germany

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Coming Summer 2024: Midnight, the Stars, and You: Dottie Manderson mysteries book 8 #newbook #mysteries #HistFic

/ Caron Allan / 2 Comments

I thought I’d already shared this, but I can’t find it anywhere, so here it is, a sneak peek of the opening scene of chapter one, possibly for the second time. (and sorry, too, it’s a bit long…)

Book 8 of the Dottie Manderson mysteries finds Dottie fed up with waiting and all the fuss, and just wanting to get on with being Mrs Detective Inspector William Hardy. She and her mother and her sister all want different things, and Dottie thinks, ‘It’s my wedding, it should be how I want it!’ An unexpected invitation could be just what she needs. How wonderful it will be to get away to a weekend house party and forget all the worries of organising a wedding!

Of course William, like all husbands-to-be everywhere has no interest whatsoever in the problems of the right kind of lace or the perfect place setting. In any case, he’s got a special kind of investigation going on, one that means bringing a good friend to justice, stretching his loyalty to his profession almost to breaking point.

Dottie Manderson was already fed up to the back teeth with parties. Admittedly, she thought, one expected parties in June. And just lately life had been nothing but. Tennis parties, tea parties, afternoon dancing parties, mid-morning tea parties, dinner parties, drinks parties in the evening, it was endless. And now, socialising in London was giving her a sense rather too much like continually stepping over graves—those of dead friends as well as dead relationships. Wherever she went, dragged along by her mother or her sister, or her mother and her sister, to various events in so many houses and gardens, she was continually running into people she either knew, or had heard of through other acquaintances.

This evening was a case in point. They were at the Sir Nigel Barrowby’s lavish Tyne Square townhouse for dinner and dancing. Dottie hid behind the same half-glass of white wine she had been clutching for almost two hours and looked about the room.

Over there by the fireplace, hanging on the arm of a man with a military moustache, was Anabella Penterman nee Wiseman of the New York Wisemans, married to Dottie’s almost-beau Cyril Penterman less than a year and a half ago, and yet now if the gossip columns were correct, the couple were very publicly living separate lives, and divorce seemed to be on the cards. The woman had glanced at Dottie four times now, though only managing a polite smile the first time, every other occurrence accompanied by a bright hard stare. Dottie noted that the woman had lost a lot of weight, and her left hand held no rings.

Then, on the opposite side of the vast drawing-room was the Honourable Peter St Clair St John giggling rather childishly, in Dottie’s opinion, with a couple of really quite young girls.

‘Far too young for him,’ Dottie murmured out loud.

‘Oh definitely, dear,’ replied a woman standing a few feet away. She drew a little closer, saying in a low tone, ‘I don’t know what their parents are thinking, introducing them to that wolf.’

‘Is he a wolf?’ Dottie turned to face her companion, a blonde woman in her early thirties, immaculately turned out. Dottie felt a slight flash of recognition but couldn’t quite reach at the woman’s name. ‘I always found him a bit dull, if I’m honest. And only ever interested in himself.’

Belatedly she wondered again who she was speaking to. It wouldn’t do to say that to a close relation.

‘Well, absolutely. His only interest in his life has always been himself. A thoroughly tiresome younger brother, I don’t mind telling you. But once he gets a girl to himself, he’s all hands, from what I hear.’

Too late Dottie recognised Christiana St John Milner, the widow of the Milner empire since her husband, the Honourable Sebastian Wilcott Milner had passed away under what Dottie had always regarded as odd circumstances during an avalanche when out skiing with friends in the Swiss Alps just–what–surely it was barely six months ago, Dottie thought, yet here was the young widow in a daring dress of figure-hugging gold lame, not a single sign of mourning about her.

Catching Dottie’s glance at her dress, Christiana smiled and held out her hand. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever been formally introduced, though I’ve seen you at a number of events over the last two or three years. Christiana, please.’

Dottie shook her hand. ‘Dottie Manderson. Just Dottie.’

‘Not Manderson for much longer, I hear,’ Christiana said.

‘No, that’s true. Not for long now. The wedding is in August.’

‘Lovely. And am I right in thinking that he’s not one of our lot?’

Dottie tried not to be offended. She’d heard this a lot in recent weeks, and should really have become used to it. But still, it grated.

‘He works as a police officer, I expect you mean,’ she said, carefully keeping her tone neutral.

Christiana looked mortified. Her hand came out to just touch Dottie’s arm. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Please don’t think I meant…’ she sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it quite the way it may have sounded. Oh this is a terrible start to a friendship. I’m not a snob.’ Looking into her glass, she said softly, ‘Believe me I know all too well how hard it is to find a good man. And when one is lucky enough to find him, one thanks one’s lucky stars and refuses to let go.’

‘I’m sorry too,’ Dottie said. ‘I’m afraid there have been a number of critical comments, and I’m feeling rather on the defensive. William’s family had an estate but unfortunately it was sold a few years ago to cover—er—’

‘Death duties?’ Christiana suggested helpfully.

Dottie gave slight shake of the head and a wry smile. ‘That. And debts.’

‘Ah! Well, there are plenty of those amongst the so-called upper-crust And even the aristocracy, as we both know. I can look around this room and tell you who is solvent and who hasn’t got the proverbial penny to bless himself with. Let’s start with my idiot brother. Broke,’ she smirked at Dottie, ‘Definitely not got a penny to his name. I’m so glad you didn’t fall for him.’ She discreetly pointed out two other men and a woman and said, ‘Broke,’ for each of them.

Dottie was astonished. Christiana was right. These four people were four people who Dottie would have practically gone to her grave believing to be financially stable, solvent. Inadvertently she took a gulp of her horrid wine. She grimaced ad swallowed quickly.

‘But my father is thinking of going into business with Lord Dalbury and his friend Milo Parkes. They’ve been having talks all week at Father’s club.’

Christiana looked concerned. ‘Oh my word, no! Please warn your father to get out whilst he can, they will bleed him dry!’

Dottie nodded. ‘I’ll tell him. Thank you for the tip. It’s astonishing isn’t it. As you say, one takes everyone at face value, and we make assumptions based on what we see.’

‘Which prompts me to ask, Dottie, what do you think of my dress?’

‘Oh it’s lovely!’ Dottie didn’t even have to stop and think about that.

‘It’s actually an old one of my mother’s. Yes, really, it’s more than twenty years old. She had some beautiful gowns and coats and things. Furs. Some of them were terribly expensive, and my brother wants to get rid of them. Sell them. He needs the money.’

Dottie said nothing, wondering—or rather suspecting she might know where this was leading.

‘I’m having a house party next weekend. I know it’s horribly short notice, but I was wondering if you’d do me a huge favour. I was hoping you might know a few people who would be interested in buying Mother’s things. I don’t want them going to just anybody, but if they were people you could recommend, I might not mind too much. I don’t want it to feel like village jumble sale with everyone pawing over my mother’s things. But if I can help Peter, I feel I have to do so, he’s so wretchedly clueless. Could you spare me a weekend to come and visit, and bring your lovely fiancé, of course, and if you could just go through Mother’s things and tell me what might fetch some cash, and who might be interested… there aren’t many ‘names’, Mother went rather her own way in fashion, although there are some Carmichael and Jennings items you might be interested to see. Well, perhaps you’ll think about it and let me know. You can telephone me, I’m on Belgravia 139.’ She grabbed Dottie’s arm and said in an urgent tone, ‘Do say you’ll think about it, please. This means so much to me.’

‘I will,’ Dottie promised, and had only time to repeat these words as the music suddenly began, and a young man came to ask Christiana to dance.

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