The Book Drop Mic with Jason Wright

Rebecca Connolly: Hidden Yellow Stars

• Season 1 • Episode 11

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Rebecca Connolly didn't choose to write her beautiful new book, it chose her. Learn why and fall in love with this true story in our latest episode of the Book Drop Mic. You'll be glad you did. And we promise you'll want to add Hidden Yellow Stars to your reading list before our discussion even ends.

Buy Rebecca's book:
https://shadowmountain.com/product/hidden-yellow-stars/

Learn more about Rebecca:
https://emilyhuey.com/

Learn more about Jason:
http://www.jasonfwright.com

About the book:
Based on the true story of two World War II heroines who risked everything to save Jewish children from the Gestapo by hiding them throughout Belgium.

Belgium, 1942.


Young schoolteacher Andrée Geulen secretly defies the Nazis in Belgium, who are forcing Jews to wear a yellow Star of David. Andrée is not Jewish, but she feels a maternal connection to her students, who are living in constant fear, and decides to take action. No child should have to suffer under such persecution. But what can one woman do against an entire army?


Ida Sterno is a Jewish woman who works with the Committee for the Defense of Jews in Belgium, a clandestine resistance group tasked with hiding children from the Gestapo. She wants to recruit Andrée because her Aryan appearance can provide crucial security measures for their efforts. Andrée agrees to join and begins work immediately by adopting a code name: Claude Fournier.


Together, Andrée and Ida, and their undercover operatives, work around the clock to move Jewish children from their families and smuggle them to safety through the secret channels established by the resistance. As each child is hidden, Andrée commits to memory their true name and history. Someday, she vows, she will help reunite as many of these families as she can.


But with the Gestapo closing in and the traitorous Fat Jacques who has turned from ally to enemy and is threatening to identify and expose any Jew he meets, Andrée and Ida must work even harder against increasingly impossible odds to save as many children as possible and keep them safely hidden--even if it might cost them their own lives.


This podcast is brought to you by InkVeins, your source for book publicity, promo, press releases and more. Text 540-212-4095 for more information.

Speaker 1:

Hello there, my friends, welcome, welcome to the Book Drop Mic brought to you by Inkvanes. We are, of course, your source for book publicity and promotion and press releases. And did you know, did you know, did you know, that my new middle grade novel, scar to Coda, is available for pre-order on Amazon? And let me just tell you, folks, I have now listened twice to the audio, the narration by Kirby Haybourne. It is so ridiculously good. And did I cry? Yes, I did. Did I cry? Even the second time I listened to Kirby reading my book. Yes, yes, I did, maybe harder than the first time. The audio looks like it's slated for April 1, in the hardcover for April 23. And if you're on NetGalley, you can request a copy right now, and there's a giveaway on Goodreads for a copy that I think runs for another couple of weeks.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I don't always know my guests personally. I don't always know where they live. I don't always engage in promotional pranks with my guests when they have a new book come out. I don't always eat pizza in Indianapolis with my guests, but I have with today's guest. Today's guest has a brand new book called Hidden Yellow Stars and my friends. It might be one of the most important books of the spring season. Her name is Rebecca Conley, or Becky, what are we calling you now?

Speaker 2:

I don't know. It depends on if it's you or someone else. Rebecca is fine.

Speaker 1:

Oh, rebecca, but can I call you Becky or some of the other? Things that I call you when you're not, okay, good, good, oh, I think I'm for the airwaves for the airwaves, for the airwaves. We have had some, some fun adventures together and my boys, who traveled with me to Indianapolis when we did that signing, still talk about that trip to get pizza with my friend Laurie Paisley, who I'm sure is listening, and and how much fun that was. How are you?

Speaker 2:

doing Good, life is good. How are you?

Speaker 1:

I am well. I don't have a brand new book out this week like you do, which is pretty exciting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it never gets old.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you don't sound that excited. Becky Conley.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, we live in this happy little bubble of pseudo ignorance, while the people that we've asked to review our books leave us really nice notes, and then we wait for the other shoe to drop one other people that don't necessarily like us leave reviews. I'm happy at the moment because the good reviews are rolling in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we were talking before, before we hit the record button, about what a strange season it is when a when a book first drops, because there's this kind of natural kind of anxiety about what people are thinking. Are they, are they loving it as much as you think they will, or are they just? You know it's your baby and so do they love your baby as much as you love your baby? And, and yeah, you know that, eventually, even if 99% of the reviews are really positive the best books ever written in history and this is true go on Amazon and pick any classic, a book that you absolutely love, look at the reviews and then go look at the one star reviews and you will find people that hate, you know, old Yellow or whatever, like all the great books have, have negative reviews, and so inevitably someone will come along and say I didn't like hidden yellow stars, and when they do Becky Connelly, we will find them and key their cars.

Speaker 2:

I've often thought about, you know, maybe sidelining as a as a writer's hit squad.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the writer's hit squad People. That's the name of the novel. We will one day co-write the the writers His squad. I love that. All right, we're gonna talk about the book, but I I maybe some folks listening have gone back and listen to our longer discussion on the previous show, right where you are, but I suspect for a lot of folks that are new to me and to this platform and to this show in particular, where we talk about books and a little shorter conversations, tell us a little bit about Becky Connelly.

Speaker 2:

All right. Well, I live in the great state of Indiana. Most people just drive through it. If you know where it is, who does you? There's a lot of corn, but there's also a lot of good people. I Am a full-time writer now, but I was an athletic trainer. That's what my my education is in. So I've done my work in sports medicine and orthopedic medicine and and things like that, so been around the block a little bit and I am just really happy to be living the dream. It's more stressful than people think it is living the dream, but it's fun too.

Speaker 1:

It is. It is more stressful when you tell people that you're right full-time. They just imagine oh, what a life. You get up and you have a big hot cup of cocoa and you go sit in your Recliner under a blanket and you get out your laptop. Or, if you're old school, your your pad and your ink pen and you just sit and tell stories all day long. Isn't it lovely? Yeah, that's not. That's not really.

Speaker 2:

That's not how it is. No, most of the time you look at your bank account when you go.

Speaker 1:

I know, I know I have to write something. Yes, right, it's all about, that's all about content. What can I generate today While you?

Speaker 2:

Money.

Speaker 1:

I know, isn't that wild that would that we're in a business where we have to To eat. We have to create something and hope that other people like it, like with the baby. We, just we go create these, these things that we love so much, these little Book babies, and then hope that people will adopt them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah yeah, speaking of babies. Oh, I knew this was gonna be hard, having some of that I love and admire on the show as I do Becky Conley that we would not actually Get anything accomplished. All right, I do want to talk about this book. I had the pleasure of doing a little bit of press for the book and working on the release a little bit and Talking to some people at your publisher about the book and the impact that the book has had, even just Internally on that team at Shadow Mountain Publishing, and you probably know this. But the book has touched a lot of people who Aren't just new to it because it dropped this week, but have known for many months that's what's coming. Tell us about.

Speaker 2:

Tell us about hidden yellow stars and and the why, why this book and why you so, to sum it up, hidden yellow stars is the story of two women in Belgium who are part of the clandestine organization that hide Jewish children from the Gestapo. There's a lot of roundups going on and they have the opportunity to get these children out of these homes a lot of times before the roundups so that the parents have a better chance than of hiding. And there's a really complicated notebook system for tracking each child, which is really cool, but I won't get into it because that's totally nerding out. But it's a true story and I found reports when I was doing research, reports from people that worked with them, people that ran the organization, from these women themselves, and just hearing them tell their own story. It was just absolutely incredible what they went through and the good that they did and the dangers that they faced constantly.

Speaker 2:

And it was just one of those stories that it just kind of grabbed me by the heart and I had to write it. There was no choice in the matter. There was the will the publishers say yes, but it was in every respect. It was a. This is a story I have to tell, and it all started because my dad found the obituary for one of the women in the book. She passed away in 2022, at the age of 100. And so the timing was just was just remarkable, you know, and the obituary had just a blip about what she actually had done. And so I went and looked a little bit deeper and it was just amazing. She and her partner and their co-workers, they saved almost 3000 Jewish children in.

Speaker 2:

Belgium from the camps.

Speaker 1:

Unbelievable.

Speaker 2:

And it's incredible, it's incredible, it's absolutely incredible.

Speaker 1:

And those 3000 people then had families and children and they had families and children and thousands and thousands and thousands of people have been able to live and work and contribute and learn to love, and all of that because of these women. It's remarkable and I love. You said to me when I was working on some of the press stuff. You said this book chose me, like this book chose me, which is a little different than how someone like you might approach, particularly with historic fiction. I mean, you could, you could write a book every day. There's so many great stories out there and you probably get pitched all kinds of interesting stories where someone will say, becky, there's this great, true story of throwing the blanket, I think you should write it. Well, you can't, you cannot possibly choose them all. So talk to me about that feeling of sort of saying, well, this one's come to me, this one's knocked on my heart and said write me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, just looking into the story, I just, the more I found, the more I was just nodding and saying, yes, I know this story, I know where you know where it's going to go, I know what to do with it, I know you know. I just felt like I knew these women and I have. I have Jewish ancestry through my paternal grandmother and so I was a little bit touched by it. Anyway, my family comes from Hungary, not from, not from Belgium, but I was feeling very in touch and in tune with them and reading through some of the stories.

Speaker 2:

A lot of the, a lot of the children were hidden religious institutions which at the time would have been predominantly Catholic, which is another part of my religious heritage, and so I've got my, my Jewish background and the Catholic background there and in some places they're working in beautiful concert and harmony together and in other places there's dissonance and I just felt so drawn into all of it and it was just, it was just extraordinary. And one of the greatest finds was a memoir written by a man named Professor Shal Hurrell. He was one of the hidden children and he has a memoir called A Child Without Shadow and it's his story about the entire thing and I was able to get in touch with him and he's still alive and speaking of the impact of saving lives, professor Hurrell went on to become a world class pediatric neurologist in Tel Aviv.

Speaker 1:

Oh my.

Speaker 2:

You know how many lives has he saved and touched because of his work, because he was saved. So he and I are good friends now and he gave me some wonderful insight and some wonderful stories. And Ida Sterna, one of the women in the book, she died. She died in the in the 60s. She had a lot of injuries during her imprisonment, but Andre Galen lived until she was 100 and she stayed in touch with people, and so he had stories upon stories about her, and so they were just so alive to me. And I was able to find some of the details of my own Jewish heritage, my Jewish relatives, because of the research that I was doing and when I told Professor Harrell that he says so you're in this book too.

Speaker 2:

And that was just that was just beautiful. But even though it's not my country, that it is my story because they are my own and I think that's a beautiful statement for the book that I think a lot of us can see ourselves in it.

Speaker 1:

Why are stories like this, why do they resonate so well with readers? All these years later? Books about World War II, books and movies, and whatever about the Holocaust, these kinds of stories there seems to be no end to the curiosity and the appetite for it. Why do you think?

Speaker 2:

that is Well. I think it's because hard times never stop, they just change and we crave light and hope in hard times, in dark times and I think, knowing a setting as dark as the Holocaust in World War II, if we know we're going to get a story of victory and hope and light that is set in that backdrop, that's just going to give us more fuel for whatever the dark or hard times that we are facing or will face or have face.

Speaker 1:

If these two women and I know there are other players in the book, of course, but these two really the stars of the story in the book and in real life, which is another question I'll ask you in a minute but if these two women were listening to this episode today, what would you tell them?

Speaker 2:

I would tell them thank you. Thank you for what they did, but also thank you for making the reports that they did so that it was possible for the rest of us to know what they did. And thank you for the example that they set, and I mean the lives that they changed, but also the lives that they went on to live afterwards. I mean they were changed by these experiences and the world was only improved by all that they did. So it would be all gratitude, and then I would just hope and pray that they approved of how I portrayed them.

Speaker 1:

I think they would.

Speaker 2:

I hope so I tried.

Speaker 1:

So to that other question if you had to create a pie chart of your time on this project with research talking to this professor, for example, reading other source material, watching documentaries, whatever you might have done and then just sitting at your laptop and writing, like actually pushing the story forward, laying down the narrative that is now in the book, as opposed to research itself. What does that pie chart look like as a percentage?

Speaker 2:

In this case it was probably about half and half, because, as I was just getting into the writing, then there were more things that had to go look up. But the initial research took a couple of months to make sure I laid things out in the proper chronological order and then had a decent understanding of it all. And then I'd be like well, I don't really know this, you know, and some things you don't know, until you're in the middle of writing the story, all of a sudden you know you're writing about Belgium in. I can't remember what years this book takes place in right now, but 1943, let's say so. I'm, you know, I'm like I don't really know what Belgium was like in 1943. But um, but then I have another report of somebody else who was living in that time and who can tell me what Belgium was like in 1943. So then I would just get a couple of notes like okay, break it back in. So writing and research was about 50-50.

Speaker 1:

And how long did you spend from from the day you? Well, from the day your dad pushed you that link and said hey, check this out until the day you finished that first full draft, not the publication Eight months.

Speaker 2:

Oh about eight months.

Speaker 1:

And were you writing other things during this time, or were you really sort of oh, you were Okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was. I was writing other things at the time too.

Speaker 1:

Okay, look at this multitasking, becky Connelly. I can barely write one thing at a time.

Speaker 2:

There's a reason why. There's a reason why I have to take many naps now. I can't cordon my brain off like I used to.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's remarkable how prolific you are, and I'm just so fascinated by this, just this world of historic fiction where you're well that's, maybe that's the better question is what percentage of the book is is fictionalized.

Speaker 2:

All of the situations are true. All of the children that they reference or work with are true. The dialogue is probably 90% made up.

Speaker 1:

But all of the. Fine, necessity, obviously yeah.

Speaker 2:

Fine necessity, yeah, and the details about the rescue specific children. All of that is from document.

Speaker 1:

You must have felt enormous pressure to honor these people. I don't just mean the heroes, I mean the families that the, the children of the children, of the children that are alive today, like this professor, is just the pressure to know that you were honoring their legacy and their story Right. Did you have you had alpha readers, beta readers?

Speaker 2:

or alpha readers, beta readers, sensitivity readers. It was really important to me that in a story like this, that everybody's, everybody's faith and tradition was was honored and represented correctly, and then that I took very little creative license with with these painful circumstances.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and, and as you're doing all of that, you're also working on other projects, which just boggles my little brain. It's my brain is boggled that you're able to do that. Speaking of what is what's next for you, miss Conley.

Speaker 2:

Well, there is a cozy mystery coming down the pipe. I'm in revisions for that right now. I don't actually have a release date for it yet, but that's a new one for me, not something I've done before, but it's been a really fun adventure and it should be really fun when that one is ready to really talk about. But yeah, cozy mystery.

Speaker 1:

And then do you have another, because you've had now three spring releases sort of in this genre. You have another one in the pipeline for 2025 or not yet there's no date on it yet.

Speaker 2:

We are finalizing the details, but we have the subject and we have the characters.

Speaker 1:

Oh, okay. And then, most importantly, how do we get Netflix to buy Hidniyolo Stars and to bring this story to an even wider audience? How do we do that, becky Connelly.

Speaker 2:

I don't know. I don't know, but I did just see that they are making a movie about Nicholas Winton, who did extraordinary things for Jewish children in Czechoslovakia. So I think if we could just tap into the people that made that, maybe they'd want to do another one. Yeah, because I mean, that's a fabulous story that I love very, very much from history, and here's another one that would pair along just beautifully. So, if anybody knows, I think Bleaker Street is the production company that put that one on. So if anybody knows Bleaker Street, Bleaker Street.

Speaker 1:

Bleaker Street, if you're watching, if you're listening, if you're Netflix anyone?

Speaker 2:

If you know anyone, if anybody knows Kenneth Branagh, I think Kenneth Branagh would do a great job directing.

Speaker 1:

Yes, at.

Speaker 2:

Kenneth.

Speaker 1:

Branagh yeah, absolutely yeah, this would just be so. I can see the trailer. I can see the little three minute trailer promoting this down the road. Well, patience right, patience Right. You are a remarkable person and I'm thrilled that we've had a chance to chat and to catch up. It's been too long. I just think you're the best. I admire more than your talent, it's just such a gifted wordsmith. I just admire the good person that you are and it's a privilege to know you and to associate with you, and I hope that you have many, many, many, many, many, many more books than the pipeline.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, same to you.

Speaker 1:

All right, you be good, would ya?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'll try, you try. Ha ha ha, looking forward to the next western episode.