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Stephanie Dray has found her sweet spot telling the stories of America’s “forgotten women”. Her latest blockbuster, The Women of Chateau Lafayette, is no exception. It’s a rollicking historical saga reaching across three centuries – from the French Revolution to the Second World War.
Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and in Binge Reading today Stephanie Dray talks about one of the most anticipated historical novels of 2021, and the French American alliance that has saved the world three times. (Winston Churchill might be turning over in his grave hearing me make that statement.)
We’ve got three eBook copies of Stephanie’s book, The Women of Chateau Lafayette, to give away to three lucky readers in our Royal House giveaway. Enter the draw on The Joys of Binge Reading website or look for it on our Facebook page.
And just a reminder, if you enjoy this podcast, for the equivalent of a cup of coffee a month you can get lots more exclusive bonus content – including hearing Stephanie answer our Getting-to-Know-You quick fire questions – by becoming a supporter of Binge Reading on Patreon.
Check us out on www.patreon.com/thejoysofbingereading.
Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:
- How Stephanie got started on a Cleopatra trilogy
- Writing ‘one of the most anticipated’ books of 2021
- Why Lafayette is important to the world
- What part his wife Adrienne played in his victories
- What Stephanie is working on next
- Why Lafayette deserves to be celebrated in the US
Where to find Stephanie Dray:
Website: https://www.stephaniedray.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephanie.dray/
Facebook: @stephaniedrayauthor
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.nz/stephaniedray/_created/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4072332.Stephanie_Dray
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/stephanie-dray
What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.
But now, here’s Stephanie.
Introducing author Stephanie Dray
Jenny Wheeler:. Hello there, Stephanie, and welcome to the show. It’s good to have you with us.
Stephanie Dray: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Jenny Wheeler: You are a USA Today bestselling author specializing in historic fiction. You do some great books co-authoring but this latest one, The Women of Chateau Lafayette, is entirely your own work.
It has a lot of true history in it and is about an extraordinary castle in the heart of France and three generations of women, spread from the years of the French Revolution to the Second World War. It’s a wonderful historic saga. What got you started on it?
Stephanie Dray: Thank you for saying it’s a wonderful saga, because it felt like it even while writing it. I started it because I had been writing about American founding mothers for a couple of novels.
I’ve written America’s First Daughter with my very dear friend and co-author, Laura Kamoie. We also wrote My Dear Hamilton, which is about Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, the wife of Alexander Hamilton, America’s first Secretary of the Treasury, who is now also a Broadway star. I’m not sure if Hamilton has reached Australia, but it’s still going strong here.
Jenny Wheeler: It is one of my ambitions in life to see Hamilton. I did interview Laura about the book 18 months or so ago, and I was resolved that somehow or other, I was going to go and see Hamilton.
The genesis for the Lafayette saga
I didn’t know much about Alexander Hamilton before I read that book. I loved that book too, and then I discovered it was coming to Sydney. I thought fantastic. I put my name down for all the advanced notice of pre-sales for Sydney, and then what happened? Early last year, COVID struck.
Stephanie Dray: Oh no. Well, I hope you get to see it after we’re out of the woods with this pandemic, because it’s really fun, really worthwhile. It was a big inspiration for Laura and me.
The other inspiration in writing those books about American founding mothers is that we discovered a Frenchman, Lafayette, who was an American founding father that people don’t often think of as being quite as important and necessary to American independence as he was. He was also a very colorful character and he was very kind to the women I had been writing about.
That’s when I discovered that he had an amazing wife and an amazing love story. Very seldom do we have historic love stories that transcend the ages and inspire and speak to us.
This was one of them. When I discovered their story, I couldn’t wait to introduce readers to Adrienne Lafayette and her remarkable story of courage. But then the story expanded. Shall I explain how?
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, please do.
Stephanie Dray: I had discovered, while writing about Adrienne, that the castle she was a mistress of and that Lafayette was born in, is a little castle in Auvergne, in the mountains, very far away from anything served as a shelter for more than 25,000 children, at first during World War I, again during World War II. Importantly, it was a refuge for Jewish children during the Holocaust.
Discovering the American connection with the Lafayette chateau
I thought the Lafayettes, and their amazing humanitarian legacy, would be over the moon to know that their house was used in this beautiful way, and I had to know how on earth that happened. I wanted to know who bought this house in France.
I knew it was an American woman and I discovered her name was Beatrice Chanler. That’s when I thought to myself, I know that name, Beatrice Chanler, that’s very familiar.
When I looked up at my bookshelf, I saw that I had a book by Beatrice Chanler. I thought, that cannot possibly be the same woman, but I took the book down and it was the same woman.
Even more remarkably, the book in question was a biography of Cleopatra Selene, which is the biography that started my writing career.
My very first books were about Cleopatra’s daughter – Lily of the Nile is the first one. I thought, oh my God, this woman has been sitting on my bookshelf all these years waiting for me to discover the real story is her.
She is an amazing person and she carried on the Lafayette legacy. It was so remarkable. At that point I knew that this book was wasn’t just about people who were living. It was about the impression they leave behind, and the good they do in the world.
This was a very special place that served as a beacon of hope in three of history’s darkest hours, so that’s what the book became.
One of the most anticipated historical novels of 2021
Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. And before anybody had even read it, it was dubbed as one of the most anticipated novels of 2021. I wonder what kind of extra pressure that puts on you as an author, when you are seeing your book flagged that way before you’ve had a chance for anyone to see it. Did it make you feel, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this?
Stephanie Dray: I am a Nervous Nellie, so yes. I thought to myself, this is my first solo title in a long time, so that made me nervous. I also knew this was a story that was more complicated than anything I had told before. It was a story that was going to be told in three different time periods, about three different women who all lived in this one house.
I worried that my readers wouldn’t like it, so I lost many nights of sleep. I was definitely under a lot of pressure, and I’m grateful for everyone who has loved it and told their friends all about it.
Jenny Wheeler: For those who don’t know so much about American history – and I think there are probably even quite a few Americans who don’t know much about what Lafayette did – we will backtrack a bit.
The first generation of your story. Adrienne is an aristocrat. She marries the young Lafayette. I think her family has far more status than his at the beginning.
Layfayette’s contribution to the American War of Independence
Lafayette is a Marquis who goes to America to help the Colonies fight Britain, because he’s got this passionate burning sense of wanting to help free men – the kind of thing that was happening in the 18th century. Could you briefly summarize for us the key part he played in that initial battle – the Americans freeing themselves from the British king.
Stephanie Dray: One of the reasons Lafayette is so important, not just to Americans but to the world, is that I think he was the key figure in creating Western democracies. He is the enlightenment figure who took the philosophical premise that was happening in France and ended up translating it broadly into real action.
He came to the United States at the age of 19 against the wishes of the French King to fight in George Washington’s army. And I know that we tend to over idealize the American founding, but from the perspective of someone like Lafayette, it truly was a world changing event. He wanted it to spur a worldwide movement towards democracy and away from monarchy. And that’s what he did.
He was only 19 and he was a great general. I couldn’t even balance my checkbook when I was 19. I’m always amazed that he did this and that he held to his principles, even when people around him were less idealistic or more cynical or corrupted by the whole process. In his first battle, at the Battle of Brandywine, I believe he was wounded. Don’t hold me to that being his first battle, but if it wasn’t the first it was shortly thereafter. It was a flesh wound, so he escaped handily.
‘The boy’ helps create a significant victory for the American Revolution
Ultimately he became such an important military figure in George Washington’s retinue that he was the one who tracked Cornwallis at Yorktown and helped lead to the American victory there.
He was an instrumental factor. I don’t want to get into the weeds about the American Revolution, but originally the big battle was supposed to be in New York. It was Lafayette who encouraged George Washington and his aides to reconsider and come down to Virginia to fight that final battle where he had Cornwallis cornered.
Cornwallis was contemptuous of Lafayette. He would call him “the boy”, so I’m sure it was very satisfying for Lafayette on every level, when that became the resounding victory it was.
Jenny Wheeler: With his connections back to the French Court, he was also very useful in an international political sense, wasn’t he?
Stephanie Dray: Yes. I honestly think that the French and American Alliance would not have happened without Lafayette. It was his sort of stardom, because he became very famous in France once he went on this escapade. He defied the King, he became a hero and captured the popular imagination. That put a lot of pressure on the Royals.
Of course, his wife helped achieve this alliance with France. I like to say that the Franco-American Alliance saved the world three times over. We had a lot of help from Australians, but I do think that the French American Alliance was pivotal to the development of Western democracy. None of that could have happened without Lafayette or his wife.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, although Winston Churchill might think that it was also a British American Alliance, but we’ll let that go, being one of the colonies.
Stephanie Dray: Sure. We have to give Sir Winston his due.
Jenny Wheeler: So, Lafayette is a hero in America. He goes back to his wife in France. They have quite a few years when they’re apart while he’s off fighting and she’s keeping the home fires burning. Then they come back to the Revolution, both of them fired up with this vision about freeing men and having democracy.
The French Revolution turns against one of its own
Then, sadly, we all know how the French Revolution ended, with a lot of violence and the execution of the king. Not only the king though, the Revolution turns against him ultimately, doesn’t it, and he barely escapes beheading himself. It is his wife who saves him in this dreadful period of their lives.
Stephanie Dray: Yes. I love the French Revolution because it’s so complicated. I remember when I was in France, I was trying to figure out when the actual end of the Revolution was and a French man told me, you mean it’s over? They looked at it as this ongoing process, but the beginning, of course, was really bloody and messy.
Even though Adrienne and Lafayette were at the forefront of the exciting idealistic period, the Revolution does turn against them and he ends up in prison.
I must say that being able to write about a heroine who saves the life of the hero was something new and novel. I admire her so much. I would never have the courage to do what she did – to go into prison with her husband and save his life. That was an amazing story, and I couldn’t wait to tell it.
Jenny Wheeler: At the moment you’ve got quite a remarkable campaign going to get more national recognition for Lafayette in America. You’ve got a thing online where people can go and see the States that have already signed up to support that. Tell us about this vision you’ve got going.
American Friends of Lafayette organizing for remembrance
Stephanie Dray: This is not my project. It is officially Julien Icher’s project. It’s the Lafayette Trail project. I am a member of the American Friends of Lafayette organization, and so I am trying to get a Lafayette Day recognized in my State, in part because it’s something my second heroine, Beatrice Chanler, always wanted to do
She was trying to push for a national Lafayette Day so that Americans would understand the significance of his heroism in our war, but more importantly, the influence of his legacy on America’s role in the world and the battles we chose to fight.
Jenny Wheeler: Do you have a date in mind?
Stephanie Dray: I would like to do it on his birthday on September 6, but there are other dates under consideration. We are hoping that the Maryland Legislature will take up the issue in this coming session. They were a little busy with the pandemic last year.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, I imagine everything’s been shunted aside a bit. At the moment, how many States have registered interest? How far has this idea got wings at the moment?
Stephanie Dray: I’m only focusing on Maryland, so I’m not sure about that.
Jenny Wheeler: Beatrice Chanler is another contradiction in a way because she’s a glittering American socialite. She’s got no reason to even be in France. She could be back in New York, drinking champagne and dancing in jazz clubs, but she goes to France. During the First World War she takes amazing risks and does some amazing things, including working in the field with ambulances at one stage. Tell us about Beatrice.
Beatrice Chanler and the ‘Why Not Me?’ factor – Stephanie Dray
Stephanie Dray: Beatrice was one of about 100,000 Americans who were originally trapped in Europe at the start of World War I, because all the ships were commissioned at the sudden outbreak of war. She was trapped there for a few months. What she saw really affected her, and she decided she had to do something about this war.
I always laugh when I see that she’s like, someone has to do something, and she decides that if someone has to do something, it might as well be her. That sort of goes with Lafayette’s motto, which is Why Not?
I always think he’s saying, Why not you? Why not me? Why is it somebody else’s job to take care of the problems in the world? Beatrice embodied that motto.
She went home and started a charity called the Lafayette Fund. They raised an incredible amount of money to buy ambulances and supplies for the French soldiers in the trenches.
Then she returned to France, as you mentioned, as a war relief worker. In fact, she crossed the ocean, I counted seven times. It must have been eight, but I was able to document at least seven. She traveled across a mine-laden ocean more than any other relief worker.
She was eventually decorated for that heroism by France. I think she really liked that honor. It was probably a nice feather plume for her hat.
Beatrice’s motivation? He helped us so we’ll help you
Jenny Wheeler: How did the connection with Lafayette happen there? Why did she call it the Lafayette Fund?
Stephanie Dray: We don’t have documentation of why, but it’s clear that she was interested in Lafayette even before the outbreak of the war. She made a very natural assumption that because Lafayette and Adrienne had helped equip American soldiers during the Revolution and gave them clothing and shoes and supplies, it would appeal to American sense of beholding that we owed a debt to France, and so she was able to fundraise in his name.
She did a lot of wacky things like throwing a children’s play to make Americans remember why Lafayette was so important to them.
I have a theory about why Beatrice was always interested in Lafayette and that is because, even though she was a glittering socialite and was she was married to a millionaire, she had a family secret. I’m not going to tell you who she was, but I am going to say that her upbringing was quite challenging. I think she was the American dream that Lafayette wanted to bring into being.
Her childhood house was very close to Lafayette Park in Boston, and I like to think that as a child, she must have looked at those statues and it stuck with her. It was something she thought about, because she dedicated herself to Lafayette’s memory for the rest of her life.
Jenny Wheeler: Then amazingly your next heroine, the third one in the story in the Second World War, also has amazing connections with the Lafayette legacy, doesn’t she? Tell us about her.
The real hidden heroes – the teachers and forgers in the Nazi regime
Stephanie Dray: I should start by mentioning that the third heroine in my story is a composite character of a number of real women at the Chateau who did amazingly heroic things during the Holocaust. We know, for example, that there was a French schoolteacher at the Chateau who helped the French Resistance stay in hiding.
Unfortunately, the French Resistance didn’t name who this schoolteacher was, so I knew things like that happened at the Chateau, but I didn’t have a name to attach to them.
We have some similar instances of artists who were forgers in the area, and we know for a fact that Jewish children were hidden in the Chateau. One of the children who was hidden there, Giselle Feldman, talks about who might have helped her but she doesn’t name them, so I decided that it was best if I made a heroine who encompassed all the heroics that were happening during this time.
That’s when I came up with Marthe. I am probably butchering her name. There is a very nice French way of pronouncing it, but I can’t make my throat make that sound, so I’m going to have to go with Marthe. Marthe is an orphan who was raised by Beatrice and others at the Chateau and grows up to be a schoolteacher.
She really wants out of this castle. She doesn’t care anything about the Lafayette legacy. She doesn’t care anything about this castle. She just wants to move to New York and live her life but, unfortunately, the Nazis invade France. Then she is faced with some difficult choices about how she’s going to react. She ends up learning to love and respect the women who came before her there, including Adrienne and Beatrice.
Famous Lafayette chateau now a museum open to all
Jenny Wheeler: Who owns the castle today?
Stephanie Dray: The castle is now owned by the French Government and it is a museum.
Jenny Wheeler: Oh, great. I wasn’t sure if it was still open for people to visit.
Stephanie Dray: Yes, it is. I had the chance to visit in 2017 and it was a really remarkable trip.
Jenny Wheeler: Fantastic. Have you been pleased with the reception the book has got so far?
Stephanie Dray: I have. Occasionally I’ll see a review where somebody might say, wait a minute, were there two world wars and were they were both in France, and was Germany was involved in both of them.
I get a little stressed out when I see that. But for the most part, people have been so warm and wonderful. I appreciate all the readers who have bought the book and told their book clubs about it or have invited me to visit their book clubs. It’s been great.
Jenny Wheeler: I know you’re very particular about your historical research, and there’s a huge amount of detailed research that backs the book in terms of the facts. But a lot of the things that happened were so amazing that you keep on thinking of that saying, sometimes fact is stranger than fiction, don’t you, because there were some remarkable things that happened to all these people.
Hiding George Washingon’s duelling pistols from the Nazis
Stephanie Dray: I couldn’t believe that there were secret tunnels in the castle that people were escaping from and children were hiding in. That was real. They had to hide George Washington’s dueling pistols from the Nazis. If you tried to make these kinds of things up as a writer, you’d be laughed out of town, but these are real things that happened.
There is a little story about those secret tunnels. When I went to France in 2017, I asked about the tunnels and I don’t know if there was a language barrier or what the problem was, but they were not able to show me any tunnels, and we wandered around looking for what might have been.
When I got back to the United States, I went to the New York Historical Society to look through Beatrice Chanler’s papers, and that is where I found pictures of the secret tunnels at the castle that she had helpfully labeled, secret tunnels. Beatrice was not going to let this little detail get away from me. Again, I’m quite grateful. She’s like a little writing genie on my shoulder.
Jenny Wheeler: You mentioned that before you got into this remarkably fertile period of American early history, you were writing way back in the time of Cleopatra. Tell us a little bit about your career in the early days before you got into writing fiction. How long did it take you to decide that being a writer was your calling?
Stephanie Dray: I wanted to be a writer when I was a young person, but my mother very wisely told me that it would be hard to make a living doing that, so I became a lawyer for about 10 minutes before I decided that was not for me, and I embarked on a writing career. It took at least a decade before I had a professional sale, and I was very down about it, very discouraged.
How Stephanie got started – with Cleopatra
Now, of course, I see all that time as well spent in terms of learning my craft. But I will say that early on, when I got married, on my honeymoon, I was going through the airport and I picked up a book by Margaret George called The Memoirs of Cleopatra. I became obsessed with this book to the point where poor Mr Dray was quite put out. It was our honeymoon, and he wanted me to stop reading all the time.
When I got to the end of this book, I learned that Cleopatra had a daughter. She had been a real queen in the ancient world and her story is not tragic in the way Cleopatra’s is. Sometimes they say well-behaved women don’t make history. Well, she was well-behaved but she was also very successful, and I wanted to celebrate that, so I started writing Lily of the Nile. It’s a bit of a historical fantasy book, actually, there are some magical realism elements to it.
I ended up writing a series. There’s Lily of the Nile, Song of the Nile, and Daughters of the Nile. That took up a good part of my early career. I loved those books and I was very happy about that. Then I met Laura Kamoie and the rest, as they say, is history.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. When I interviewed Laura, we went into how that collaboration came about, so I’ll refer to that in the show notes and people can listen to the interview with Laura to hear more about that.
Looking back over your professional life, your writing life, is there anything you would change with the benefit of hindsight?
Anything Stephanie Dray would change with the benefit of hindsight?
Stephanie Dray: It’s a really good question. I don’t want to be trite and say, every decision I made brought me to where I am today, even though that’s all true. You can’t be sorry for mistakes you made. But early in my career, I didn’t think enough about what the market would bear. I didn’t know enough.
Now, whenever I want to write a book for publication, I have to find something I love, that I am obsessed with, that is also marketable. Those are two different things. You have to find if there’s an overlap in those. I probably spent way too much time writing long books, and I am now realizing that you get paid the same amount, no matter how long the book is. So, I have learned that I must write shorter books.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s a very practical one. The romance writers who do so well with their indie publishing – they are often quite short books and they turn out a lot of them a year.
This is The Joys of Binge Reading, and we are starting to run out of time together, so turning to Stephanie as reader. The sorts of books you write can be binge books because once you start into them, they are incredibly compelling and you want to keep on burning the midnight oil to finish them. But they are big books. Are you a binge reader yourself, and who do you like to read?
What Stephanie Dray is reading now – favorite books
Stephanie Dray: I have so many books I love to read that I’m going to name the first ones that come to mind. I’m a big fan of Ken Follett’s books, like The Pillars of the Earth and all of those giant trilogies. You can see that my tastes do run long. I also am a huge fan of my very dear friend, Kate Quinn. I just read The Rose Code, which I thought was amazing.
I read a lot of historical fiction. The only non-historical fiction I can name at the moment is Fredrik Backman. I remember A Man Called Ove made me howl, and more recently I read Anxious People, which was also really bizarre and funny.
Jenny Wheeler: I’ve seen one you’ve recommended online recently which is very much in line with what you were talking about, historical fiction, The Invisible Woman. (By Erika Robuck) I have just finished listening to that in audible as a result of seeing your recommendation. That was another wonderful Second World War story.
Stephanie Dray: I’m so glad you enjoyed it. I adore Erika Robuck.
Jenny Wheeler: She was new to me, so that was lovely.
Tell us what you’re working on now, the next 12 months or so. You’ve got another fantastic project going with another forgotten woman, haven’t you?
Stephanie Dray’s next ‘forgotten woman’ project
Stephanie Dray: Yes, I do. I am writing about Frances Perkins, who is the most important woman in American history. I don’t say that lightly, but she was. Frances Perkins was America’s very first female Cabinet Secretary, but that is not why she was the most important American in history. She is the architect of the New Deal. She is Franklin D. Roosevelt’s right-hand woman.
She also fought a lonely battle to save Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. This is after she had an enormously accomplished life as a social worker and an industrial risk assessor. Every time you look up and you see in America that we have sprinkler systems and fire exits and all sorts of safety regulations, those all came out of Frances Perkins’s work.
I am delighted by her. She is unlike any heroine I’ve written before because she has so much agency. She makes things so. She doesn’t have to have a man she’s doing things for, unless you count the President.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s a very big call to say the most important woman in American history. Two President’s wives immediately come to mind – Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Kennedy. Of course, they have both got plenty of pre-fame, but we’ll be interested to hear how Frances can rival them.
Stephanie Dray: Well, I adore both of them. I would never say anything against Jackie Kennedy or Eleanor Roosevelt, but I think Frances eclipsed both of them in terms of raw accomplishment, and the fact that there is no American alive today whose life she isn’t impacting.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. Stephanie, we are coming to the end of our time together. I know you must, in this year of pandemic, have had to resort to talking a lot online, even if you didn’t before. Where can readers find you online and what’s the best way for them to reach out?
Where to find Stephanie Dray online
Stephanie Dray: I am all over social media. Please keep in touch with me on Facebook or Instagram. You can visit my website www.stephaniedray.com where I have all kinds of extra research material. I also have a great historical book of the month club where I give away free books all the time. So please do join that monthly newsletter.
Jenny Wheeler: We will have all the links to those connections in the show notes for this episode, so they will be there for evermore as evergreen content online. Thanks so much for being with us today.
Stephanie Dray: Thank you.
If you liked Stephanie Dray you might also like Stephanie Parkyn with Empress Josephine – Love & Obsession in Napoleonic France
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