…and other things that became apparent along the way
Between Silk and Wool began with the story of HILDE, the daughter of a widowed gardener, in a small town in the Netherlands. When the occupiers come to town, she’s ready to resist, but to her dismay, her family seems destined to cooperate, her father insistent “there’s no resistance without blood.”
I wrote the entire arc of Hilde’s story, imagined the struggles she would face and the ultimate choices she’d be forced to make. But when trusted early readers read the story, they insisted I was outlining a novel, not writing a short story.
Having already completed a novel, I wasn’t motivated to start on another ambitious project, but started jotting down ideas anyways. In my downtime, I fell in love with the PBS series “Downtown Abbey”, and particularly the more snobbish characters. How would a wealthy family respond differently to Nazi occupation? How would the lives of a farmer’s daughter and an aristocrat collide? Who would be most able or willing to help a stranger?
Now that I had some questions to explore, I began to dream about what kind of woman might live in a castle in the Dutch countryside. What was her marriage like? What were her hobbies? Did she have bricks of gold in the barn or did her fortunes disappear in Depression?
In short, it was more than I could have imagined to create Lady ASTRID Van Soelen. I learned a lot about equestrian life in the Netherlands, where the upper class derived their wealth and what the post war future held for aristocrats in Europe.