The Fortress

The Fortress

by Madeleine Romeyer Dherbey

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GENRE:   WWII Historical

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BLURB:

The war has not made much of difference in Alix’s life. Her father has seen to it that she grows up unaware, unworried, but safe in her tiny village under the cliffs of the Vercors. All around her he has built a fortress whose walls are impregnable—until the 27th of April, 1944. That day he makes a stupid mistake up on the cliff, and the walls of the Fortress start crashing down. Reality breaks into Alix’s life with unrelenting violence, unforeseen possibilities. From now on, every decision she makes will mean life or death.

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EXTRA INFORMATION:

Six weeks before D-Days, a thousand kilometers from the beaches of Normandy.

There are no generals in the French Vercors, just a handful of men and women against the Nazi war machine. They come from Bretagne, Paris, and Slovenia, and the villages up on the cliff. They are the Fortress.

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EXCERPT:

When she looked up, the cart had rounded the curve, and the way ahead was wide open. In a minute they would leave the cliff Madeleine Romeyer Dherbey 14 behind. She stopped the horses and turned around, expecting to see her father on top of the log pile. “Papa?” she called. There was no response. Her eyes darted from one place to another. On the wall against the blue sky, behind the cart, down the road, as far as it went along the rock face. “Papa?” she called again. He was there a second ago…right there, he was standing right there…. “Papa,” she cried. “Where are you?” Then she saw Mikko, two paws on the wall, sniffing. And her hands started to shake. “Papa,” she said, but no sound came out. “Papa, come back.” 

Author Interview:

1.Did you always want to be an author? 

In some very obscure recess of my consciousness, yes? I never brought it to the surface, for a ton of—obviously invalid—reasons, the main one being, writing in a foreign language is rather daunting. I didn’t think I could pull it. With college, children, and job pressures, I didn’t have the time to even consider it. And I think I did not—could not—still do not—consider myself to be a writer. I see myself as a multifaceted person, like all of us, who happen to write as one of the things a person can do. I am a wife, a mother, a teacher. I am Christian, I am a woman—but not a feminist. In fact, I am nothing that ends in ist, unless it’s individualist. My day job is teaching a wonderful bunch of non-verbal high-schoolers, a real challenge for someone who lives to share ideas. The positive side is that I won’t get in trouble with my school district for jumping on my soap box and voicing politically incorrect ideas. I like to work, it provides a wealth of details and ideas I can adapt to my stories, particularly the MS I’m working on now. Needless to say, I am happy with the release of my first book, and I hope it is read and appreciated by many. My message to my readers is, consider taking up an artistic activity as one of the things you do. Painting, music, writing, you don’t need to be a master to become one by creating a master piece. 

2.Tell us about the publication of your first book. 

My Fortress world already existed. I grew in the Vercors mountains, near a village called Malleval which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1944. My uncles were accused of betraying the resistants encamped there, and while kids my age worried about the future, I wondered about what had really happened, and how my family was involved. Were they Nazis, did they cause their own neighbors to be murdered? I had been building that world for so many years in fact, that when I felt ready, the characters just appeared, some jumping out of history books, others out of my childhood, and quite a few out of some recess of my mind where I didn’t know they were hiding. The inspiration came from an intense longing for that past, my past, the grandfather I never met, the father who still guides my decisions, the brother I never got to see all grown up.

The eight months it took to compose the first draft were almost hypnotic. The result was not good, but I didn’t know it, thank God, or I would have never submitted it. It was picked up by John W. Ware, a New York agent whose patient expertise is the professional touch behind my sometimes too emotional rhetoric—and the French turn of phrase. He did bug me about commas, though, and said that my tendency to lend human traits to things was odd. The best compliment was when he told me he fell in love with the female protagonist, Alix. 

3.Besides yourself, who is your favorite author in the genre you write in? 

Väinö Linna,Under the Northern star, a trilogy. It’s a story of hard work, loyalty, forgiveness, and amazing courage during the ferocious civil war in Finland. Read it. Akseli Koskela will show you what a real man looks like.

4.What's the best part of being an author? The worst? 

Again, I really don’t identify as an “author”, perhaps because the idea is stressing to me. The marketing, promotional efforts, the speaking in public, all of that bores and intimidates me. I wouldn’t mind writing full-time, if I could afford it, but it would imply projecting myself as more confident, maybe even more arrogant, than I am. 

I like to write, period. The writing process has made me a little wiser, certainly more thoughtful. It has taught me to look at people, events, in a more open-minded manner, and forced me to acknowledge latent conflicts, if not resolve them. 

5.What are you working on now?

I am working on the contemporary tale of a young school teacher who is entrapped in a scheme to cast her as a terrorist. There are strong political and religious themes, as well as a romantic element. I guess you could call it a tale of modern resistance. I am a school teacher, and expressing political opinion in school is forbidden—really forbidden. Besides, the likes of me are pretty much underground. We recognize each other like Christians in Rome, with a glance and a rolling of the eyes. So being able to write the ins and outs of oppression in the public-school world, coupled with a the building of a fake terror plot by a branch of the federal government no one in their right mind should trust, was a bit of a catharsis for me. You will love it or hate it, depending on your allegiances, and who cares? It’s not meant to be commercial.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Madeleine Romeyer Dherbey was born in the French Alps, moved to the United States twenty-five years later, and currently lives in the mountains of Virginia with her husband, two daughters, and Mikko.

Website

WWW.MadeleineRomeyerDherbey.com

FaceBook

https://www.facebook.com/Madeleine-Romeyer-Dherbey-2067077286871927/?modal=admin_todo_tour

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE:

Madeleine Romeyer Dherbey will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway