Friends, I am so excited because today I get to share a book with you that I have a close personal connection to–WHITE ROSE by Kip Wilson. Kip and I have been critique partners since 2012, and so I’ve walked with her through this journey to her debut book. I couldn’t be more excited to see WHITE ROSE hit shelves next month (April 2), and I will be giving away a pre-order to one lucky reader.
From the moment Kip first told me about WHITE ROSE when we were sitting in a hotel room at NESCBWI in 2016, I was immediately gripped by the story. It’s compelling, heartbreaking, and moving. I could keep adding more adjectives, but instead, I’ll carry on to the description, followed by the interview, and let Kip tell you more about the book.
Disillusioned by the propaganda of Nazi Germany, Sophie Scholl, her brother, and his fellow soldiers formed the White Rose, a group that wrote and distributed anonymous letters criticizing the Nazi regime and calling for action from their fellow German citizens. The following year, Sophie and her brother were arrested for treason and interrogated for information about their collaborators. This debut novel recounts the lives of Sophie and her friends and highlights their brave stand against fascism in Nazi Germany.
1. This story is so powerful, and while you give an explanation in your author’s note within the actual book, could you share here why you felt compelled to tell Sophie’s story?
Back when I first learned about Sophie Scholl in high school German class, I was so inspired by her courage. A girl not much older than I was standing up to the Nazis? I was all over it. After reading everything I could about the White Rose over the years, I was further driven by a curiosity to really get to know who this girl really was, so I read more and more, went to Munich and Ulm on more than one occasion, and became frankly obsessed with the details of her life. She’s of course very well known in Germany, but here many people in the U.S. haven’t heard of her, and I’m convinced she’ll be a great inspiration to others as well, especially teenagers.
2. While WHITE ROSE is classified as historical fiction, it’s based on actual events and people. How did you balance staying as true as possible to Sophie and the other characters while adding voice and details to the story?
This was definitely the hardest part! In my original draft in verse, I was determined to stick as close to all the facts as possible, but one astute beta reader (the oh-so-wise Joy McCullough) noted that this was hindering me from getting at the heart of the story. Only after her critique was I able to let my firm grip on the facts relax a tiny bit and experiment with imagining what Sophie might have thought or felt in specific situations. The good thing is that because I’d already done so much research, I discovered I actually knew her well enough to be able to make this leap. This is what really brought me—and hopefully readers of the book—closer to Sophie.
That having been said, I was quite obsessive about the facts, and maintained a spreadsheet that lists each poem, the source or sources that informed it, and did multiple rounds of cross-checking. I did have to make some decisions without knowing certain facts (things that only Sophie herself would have known), and I made those based on what I had learned about her as a person and what I knew about the historical setting.
3. You decided to tell Sophie’s story in verse, a shift from previous manuscripts you’d written. What made you choose verse for Sophie? (An obviously perfect choice!)
Well, back in 2005, I wrote a completely different manuscript about the White Rose that was nonfiction, but it wasn’t working, and I ended up setting it aside for ten whole years. It was always there bubbling in the back of my mind though, so when a couple of verse novelists happened to mention to me in a chat that tragic, emotional subjects are often well-suited to verse, it was like a billion light bulbs going off in my head. Once I began writing WHITE ROSE in verse, I couldn’t believe I’d never tried it before. I have to admit, I’d always struggled to write in prose, but writing in verse was the first time that writing felt completely natural, so I knew I was on to something.
4. I love how the story alternates between timelines. It’s so seamless and provides a perfect forward momentum for the story. How did you determine where each scene would go?
Thank you! Since you were one of the few people who saw the first draft, you probably remember that I initially drafted the story completely in reverse, starting at the end and making my way to the beginning. Unfortunately, this didn’t work—it was too confusing to readers. But I didn’t feel like a straightforward linear timeline would do the story justice either, and when one of my critique partners (the fabulous and brilliant Beth Smith) suggested two timelines, I began experimenting with ways I could make it work.
As far as where to place each individual scene, I really enjoyed figuring out this puzzle. I am a huge fan of index cards. I use physical ones, and move them around a board until it feels like the right order, but I’ve also used the Scrivener cork board in the past for the same thing. Either way, finding the right order was actually a lot of fun.
5. I appreciated how real the protagonists are. They aren’t just heroes charging to change the world automatically. They stumble and don’t always make perfect choices right away—I’m sure because they are based on real people. Was that an important consideration for you as you were writing?
This was actually one of my most important considerations. The thing is that Sophie and her brother and their friends were absolutely real people, who made mistakes and weren’t perfect. They were members of the Hitler Youth! And their initial motivations for resisting weren’t all that altruistic, either. They weren’t initially as concerned for Jewish people and others being persecuted by the Nazis as for themselves and what this war meant for them and their friends. However, what makes their story so compelling is that they’re proof that it’s never too late to change, and it’s never too late to do the right thing. After word began to leak out about the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes, Sophie and the others realized that their government was a criminal one and that the core of their fight wasn’t an intellectual one, but a moral one. In the end, their courage speaks for itself. They certainly knew what their consequences for their actions would be, and yet they did it anyway. So even if they weren’t your typical heroes, they became heroes to me at least in part due to the rocky path they took to get there.
Thank you, Kip! Rafflecopter link
If you can’t tell, I absolutely adore this book, and I urge you all to go out and buy it yourselves! Or ask your library to order it. However, I will give away one copy (a pre-order) here on the blog. North America only, please. Leave a comment below or click on the Rafflecopter for additional entries. Open until next Monday, March 11. Whether you win the giveaway or not, definitely add WHITE ROSE to your TBR list!
Here is the screenshot from one of my chapters before revising. At the chapter level, I care about a plethora of the word “was” or “had”–I want to fix passive voice–but I find it equally as interesting if a word appears twice. Because if a word shows up two times in a single chapter, it deserves a closer look. In this particular sample, I will definitely be addressing those two sighs, and unless it’s for emphasis, one of those ideals will probably go.
