Ben Pastor is the author of the new novel The Night of Shooting Stars, the latest in her Martin von Bora series, which also includes The Road to Ithaca and Tin Sky.
Q: You've written many novels about your
character Martin von Bora. What inspired you to create him, and how did you
come up with the idea for this particular novel?
A: My alliance (and love story) with
Martin Bora goes back about 30 years. It began while I was researching the
lives of the German army officers who planned to overthrow Hitler in 1944.
Sadly, they failed in the attempt and most of them paid with their lives.
The real-life character of Colonel Claus
von Stauffenberg (known to a vast public thanks to the film Operation Valkyrie,
featuring Tom Cruise) was central to the development of my protagonist. Through
the years, however, Bora grew more and more into his own person, independently
from his model.
In The Night of Shooting Stars, this
becomes evident when Bora and Stauffenberg meet face-to-face in Berlin to
discuss the upcoming plot, as interpreters of the two different but equally
passionate souls of the anti-Nazi resistance movement.
Q: Do you think he has changed over the
course of the series?
A: Definitely. In a seven-year
chronological span (1937-1944) thus far, a young idealist barely 23 years old
grows into an experienced and disillusioned 30-year-old. War and personal
losses have taken a toll on Martin Bora as they would on any human being. This
implies not only a change in his attitude toward army life and crime-solving,
but toward the world at large.
His diary entries and personal letters
reflect this attentive introspection, and provide a second level of narrative
meant to accompany the mystery plots as Bora’s character grows and evolves. This
allows the novels to be read separately or as a series…and allows me to “travel
in time” by setting Bora’s adventures in different moments of the conflict,
back and forth along the 1937-1945 continuum.
Q: What do you see as the right blend
between the fictional and the historical in your writing?
A: That is an excellent question. In my
judgment, the underlying structure of this type of novel should be as
historically accurate as possible: everything else should be a product of
invention. Having worked for many years in academia, I am sensitive to the
perils of manipulating history, and tread very carefully when it comes to
including real-life characters in my fiction.
Generally, I draw from first-hand
material, documents, and correspondence, in order to let these individuals
behave according to their actual nature. Around this core of credible
historical reconstruction, I feel free to weave events where invented
characters move just as credibly.
In this endeavor, the ratio between research
and output is such that the work behind the scenes is as substantial as it is
(and must remain) invisible!
Q: What do you hope readers take away from
the book?
A: Speaking as a reader, what I most enjoy
is when a book allows me to take away something implicit, subtle, and
suggestive. If, in addition to entertaining, I succeed in capturing the
readers’ emotions and in dropping a few thought-provoking hints worth
remembering, I will be pleased.
A story, no matter how apparently remote
from our daily lives, should always tell us something about ourselves. The
Night of Shooting Stars strives to portray the complexity of human choices in
trying times, and to remind us that – no matter how noble our intentions – some
of those choices have a high cost, for us and for others as well.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: There are a couple of projects on the
front burner now. The first is a book tour (by videoconference due to covid-19
restrictions until the end of June, and then in person) for The Great Chase, an
Aelius Spartianus mystery, set in IV century CE Palestine.
This fifth novel of the “Roman series” places
my combined interest in archeology and adventure/detection against the backdrop
of a feverish, bloody hunt for Maccabee gold through the parched hills of Galilee.
The second project is The Gypsy Synagogue,
a new Bora novel. Set during the battle for Stalingrad in 1942, it is something
I have been planning for years, an ambitious, multilayered work-in-progress
that is finally coming to completion.
I am in the third year of research, and
every day I learn something else about the harrowing German-Soviet clash on the
river Volga worth elaborating on and retelling.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Thanks for asking. The
contagion-related lockdown kept me from returning to the U.S. as scheduled, so
I am still in northern Italy.
I’m using my time here studying cartography, walking,
learning about the prehistory of the Po River valley (new ideas and
perspectives are always beneficial), working at the new Bora novel, and
planning to teach a fourth Creative Writing workshop with an interesting group
of adult women writers.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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