Why I chose Istanbul as the setting for Searching for Gertrude #MondayBlogs #AmWriting #HistoricalFiction #History

Readers often comment that my ‘glamorous life’ must give me lots of story ideas. My first response to those comments is to snort. My life? Glamorous? Um, no, not even close. Just because I’ve lived in several countries and had more than one career change doesn’t mean my life is glamorous. In fact, it often feels just plain exhausting when you’re living in a country where you don’t speak the language, it’s late, it’s dark, you’re alone in a cab, and you can’t communicate with your cab driver.

While living in Istanbul, I received tons of thinly veiled suggestions that I must be writing a novel set in Istanbul as it’s so exotic and I’m actually living there. Yeah, no, that’s not how it works. I usually just let story ideas come to me. I don’t know how – they just come to me. But these comments were driving me nuts! Was there something wrong with me that I didn’t write stories set in locations I’d lived in? Maybe I should? I spent more hours than I care to admit trying to think of a story set in Istanbul. What did I come up with? A bit fat nothing.

But then I heard something about Istanbul being to WWII what Casablanca was to WWI – a hotbed of espionage. Turkey declared itself neutral at the start of the Second World War. This neutrality, combined with its location at the intersection of Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East, made Turkey – Istanbul especially – an ideal location for espionage activity. One American official in fact claimed that you couldn’t throw a stone out of hotel window without hitting a spy.

I now had a backdrop for my story, but I still didn’t have a story. I knew I wanted to write a novel with espionage and intrigue wrapped up in a foreign locale. I vaguely thought I’d want to add some type of romance as well. I came up with the following prologue:

My first love was my next-door neighbor, Gertrude. Unlike other first loves, which fade into bittersweet memory, my first love made me into the man I am today. My name is Rudolf, and this is my love story.

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I don’t have time for love or romantic antics. I’m out to stop the most vile person in the history of mankind or die trying. My name is Rosalyn, and this is the rest of the story.

That’s all I had, though. So, I stalled. I put the novel on the back burner and wrote another cozy mystery and romantic comedy – all while this idea percolated in the back of my mind. In the meantime, I left Istanbul and moved to The Hague.

Then, fate stuck her nose in. I was browsing the shelves of used books at my local English language bookshop and ran across Midnight at the Pera Palace by Charles King. This was definitely a sign from the universe that it was time to stop procrastinating. I threw the book in my bag more determined than ever I was finally going to find my story idea.

While working on other projects, I slowly picked my way through Midnight at the Pera Palace. When I stumbled upon a vague reference to a large group of German Jewish professors who were fired from their positions during the Nazi period and went to work at Istanbul University, I knew I’d finally found the starting point of my novel.

Curious? Here’s the blurb for Searching for Gertrude, which releases on January 22^nd:

While growing up in Germany in the 1930s, Rudolf falls in love with the girl next door, Gertrude. He doesn’t care what religion Gertrude practices but the Nazis do. When the first antisemitic laws are enacted by the Nazi government, Gertrude’s father loses his job at the local university. Unable to find employment in Germany, he accepts a position at Istanbul University and moves the family to Turkey. Rudolf, desperate to follow Gertrude, takes a position working at the consulate in Istanbul with the very government which caused her exile. With Rudolf finally living in the same city as Gertrude, their reunion should be inevitable, but he can’t find her. During his search for Gertrude, he stumbles upon Rosalyn, an American Jew working as a nanny in the city. Upon hearing his heartbreaking story, she immediately agrees to help him search for his lost love. Willing to do anything in their search for Gertrude, they agree to work for a British intelligence officer who promises his assistance, but his demands endanger Rudolf and Rosalyn. As the danger increases and the search for Gertrude stretches on, Rudolf and Rosalyn grow close, but Rudolf gave his heart away long ago.  

How far would you go to find the woman you love?

Intrigued? Join my newsletter to receive the first fifteen chapters of the novel for free! I’ll be sending the excerpt out Wednesday.

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This blog is the second in a series of blogs I’m writing about the research I’ve done for my upcoming novel, Searching for Gertrude.