January 5, 2015
An
Excerpt From Behind the Lines:
 |
| Edouard Bunge |
READER AIDS
Primary People in the Book
THE BELGIANS
Edouard Bunge—A wealthy Antwerp merchant,
Bunge was vice president of the provincial relief committee for Antwerp
Province, owner of Chateau Oude Gracht on the Hoogboom estate, and widowed
father of five daughters—three of whom, Erica, Eva, and Hilda, were living with
him when the war broke out.
Erica Bunge—A twenty-two-year-old woman from a
wealthy Belgian family, Erica Bunge was unusual because she had graduated from
agricultural college in England and helped run the farm on the family’s
Hoogboom estate. During the German occupation of Belgium, she would help in a soldiers’
hospital, volunteer at a soup kitchen, and work late at night in the
underground against the Germans.
Abbé Vincent de Moor—A man of the Catholic cloth, de
Moor was not only a priest but a clandestine operative for British
intelligence. He became partners with Eugene van Doren on an underground
newspaper that would inspire a nation but lead to the imprisonment of many and
the execution of a few, including a young Belgian woman named Gabrielle Petit.
Émile Francqui—One of the most powerful and
ruthless financial men in Belgium before the war, Francqui would lead the
Comité National, the Belgian counterpart to the CRB that handled the actual
distribution of the CRB food throughout the country. He and Hoover had met
before
and disliked each other immensely. With his passion for his
country and his dominating personality, Francqui would create numerous problems
for Hoover and the CRB.
Eugene van Doren—A Belgian cardboard
manufacturer, van Doren so hated the Germans that he took up clandestine work
for de Moor before helping to develop the idea for an underground newspaper, La
Libre Belgique. His work and the newspaper would inspire the nation and
would lead to a German reward of 50,000 francs for the
capture of the newspaper’s publisher, whose identity was unknown to the Germans.
My
Post: Happy New Year! I hope that you—the small band of kind
souls who have “liked” my blog and read every post—have a great new year filled
with joy and magic.
I’m happy to report that Behind the Lines ended
2014 on some very high notes.
* Kirkus
Reviews included it in its Best Books of 2014 (Indie)
* Publishers Weekly, the bible of the book
business, called it “an intriguing
read”
* Foreword magazine called it a “fascinating
book” in a review entitled “The Indie We Love.”
All the reviews of my book can be seen by clicking here.
I know how lucky I’ve been with this book. The kind of
critical praise it’s garnered is hard to come by even if the book is published
by a traditional book publisher. For an Indie, or independently published book,
it’s something very special.
The competition for any kind of media exposure is incredibly
intense. In a previous post, I mentioned that there were more than 300,000 new
books published every year in the United States alone. I’ve just found out I
was wrong—Bowkers, which produces Books
In Print, has announced that there were 450,000 self-published American books
released in 2013. If you add 2013’s stats for traditional book publisher, the
total figure would be well over half a million new books in ONE YEAR!
Moving forward, I can’t focus on such numbers. I need to
stay true to my CRB/Belgium project by focusing on Book Two (no title yet).
I’ve already done a rough outline of Book Two, which will
contain five sections:
Winter 1914-1915
Spring 1915
Summer 1915
Autumn 1915
Winter 1915-1916
I’ve also just booked a flight to the Hoover Institution for
three days of research. While I did most of my book trilogy research last year,
this trip will help me fill in some holes in the stories of some of the CRB
delegates. And I’ve just rehired a good researcher, Wes Beck,
wesbeck1865@gmail.com, to do some work at the Herbert Hoover Presidential
Library in West Branch, Iowa.
I’m hopeful this will be another good year that will be filled
with the writing and publishing of Book Two. And I’ll try and do a better job
of keeping you posted on how I’m doing.
Thanks again for being supportive of me and this
little-known but GREAT American/Belgian story.
End of Post
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