Q&A with Adriana Allegri

 

 

 

Adriana Allegri is the author of the new novel The Sunflower House. It is set in Germany during World War II. She lives in Chandler, Arizona.

 

Q: In The Sunflower House’s author’s note, you write that you have been working on aspects of this story for more than 20 years. Can you say more about that?

A: The seeds of this novel came in two dreams more than 20 years ago. I woke up crying, went to my computer, and dashed out rough drafts of the prologue and epilogue.

 

This wasn’t a Lebensborn story at first; I wasn’t aware such facilities existed. Those rough chapters revolved around family secrets, a box engraved with a swastika, and a strained mother-daughter relationship in need of healing.

 

The voice was clear and compelling, so I decided to do some research and find a story worth telling. When an article about Hochland Home popped up during an online search, I knew I’d found that story. It was riveting.

 

Work on this novel spanned the next two decades, but those first dreams were the beginning. Without them, I wouldn’t have started the first draft.

 

Q: How did you create your character Allina?

 

A: Allina came to me fully formed in the first few chapters—her voice, physical appearance, personality, quirks, and background all dropped into my head while writing. That was true for all the characters in this book.

 

I used music to get into the right emotional space for a character or scene, and then allowed the characters to reveal themselves as the plot unfolded. Sometimes Allina surprised me, but I learned to trust the process.

Q: The writer Shelly Sanders said of the novel, “Heartbreaking and beautifully written, The Sunflower House is a story about a woman upended by trauma and secrets, who must ignore her conscience and become part of the lie she loathes most in order to survive, go forward and love again.” What do you think of that description?

A: I love Shelly’s take, because Allina had to navigate an impossible situation by making choices no one should have to make.

 

She experienced catastrophic loss, trauma, and violence before arriving at Hochland Home, so her first choice was whether to live or to die. Once she decided to live, Allina had to accept that she was trapped, with limited options.

 

When she witnessed the children’s suffering, Allina acted according to her internal moral compass—with compassion despite the personal risk and her loathing for the program. Love and empathy for these children saved Allina by keeping her heart open to friendship and love.

As events continued to unfold, however, Allina realized she’d become complicit—which led to other painful and difficult choices.

Q: The book has been described as a “real-life Handmaid's Tale.” What do you make of that comparison, and how did you research the Nazis’ Lebensborn Program?

A: The talented team at St. Martin’s Press made that comparison; I wish I’d thought of it myself! Since Nazism is a form of fascism, there are many parallels with Atwood’s Gilead.

 

Like the fictional Gilead, Germany’s population had been in decline for years. Nazi Germany's eugenics laws severely punished “Aryan” women for having abortions, but they sterilized individuals deemed unworthy of reproduction and, as we know, murdered six million Jews and millions of others. 

 

In Atwood’s book, abortions were prohibited, and Gilead was entirely white, as people of other ethnicities had been exterminated or sent to the colonies.

 

Another parallel was the treatment of women as broodmares and the edict to bear children to benefit the state. Mothers in Lebensborn homes got the best medical care and nutrition so they could produce “perfect Aryan babies.” A woman’s body and her ability to procreate were essential; her heart and mind were not.

 

As in Gilead, unwed girls at Lebensborn facilities were expected to surrender their babies for adoption. Teenagers were brainwashed; and Nazi youth group leaders indoctrinated boys and girls about “biological marriages.”

 

Young girls were taught that there weren’t enough men to go around, but that it was their sacred duty to become mothers for their Führer.

My research began online, but there was much less information on the Internet in the early 2000s. The first major boon was a copy of Master Race by Clay and Leapman at a used bookstore.

 

That led to further research, mostly in books, some of which shipped from overseas. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. had resources I couldn’t find elsewhere.

 

For any readers who might be interested in learning more, there’s a list of resources at the end of the Author’s Note in the book and at this link on my website: https://adriana-allegri.com/resources/

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My current project is a supernatural trilogy about La Strega, Italian witches. These books examine many of the concepts from The Sunflower House--choice, identity, power, compassion, and redemption--but from the perpetrator's perspective, one who is seeking forgiveness.

 

It's been interesting, to say the least, exploring those themes solely from the monster's point of view.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I’m mindful of the fact that The Sunflower House is a lesser evil story. Most of the characters in this book led privileged lives at a time when millions of innocent people—and two-thirds of the Jews in Europe—were persecuted and murdered.

 

I chose to tell the story primarily through the eyes of a young German woman because I wanted the reader to see each character from Allina’s point of view and grapple with the choices they made.

 

The material in this novel is challenging and its themes are sensitive ones. My hope is that this book, in a small way, might continue to bring critical issues to light so we can examine our own thoughts and prejudices.

 

We can’t afford to dismiss the darkness that spread like a disease during that period—or refuse to see when echoes of that darkness arise today.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb