I'll Be Seeing You

Mary Taylor Young Nature Writing

Fiction Projects

by Mary Taylor Young

A novel of World War II, based upon my parents' lives

** this just-finished novel is not yet published **

STORY SYNOPSIS

It’s December, 1941, and privileged college girl Ginny Conrad is eager to break free of her mother’s expectations and become a newspaper reporter. Her mother, Nell, has groomed Ginny to be a socialite and uses her fragile emotional state to keep her daughter tied to her. Nell lives trapped between grief and hope, waiting for the return of Ginny’s younger brother, Bertie, who disappeared 10 years earlier. After Pearl Harbor, denied a newspaper job except as a society reporter, Ginny marries her boyfriend, Dave. When he is shot down and declared missing-in-action, Ginny finds herself trapped, like Nell, between grief and hope. Defying her mother, Ginny learns to fly with the intention of joining the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). When that program is abruptly cancelled, she impulsively volunteers as a Red Cross “doughnut dolly” in France, where she endures the challenges and horrors of war. Matured into a confident and self-reliant woman, she still lives in limbo as she waits to hear news of her husband.

The War ends and Ginny becomes the director of a Red Cross club in occupied Germany. She struggles to reconcile her growing feelings for Matt, a battle-seasoned officer, with her sense of loyalty to Dave, who may still return from the War. When Ginny gives in to her love for Matt, she is overcome with guilt. Torn between the man of her past and the man who offers a future, she angrily sends Matt away. When Dave is declared dead, Ginny feels she has lost both men she loved. Nell urges her to come home to wait for Dave as she waits for Bertie. Ginny leaves the Red Cross but remains in Europe on her own. Fulfilling her early career goal by becoming a reporter for the overseas edition of the Stars and Stripes newspaper, she seeks out Matt to make a new life with him.

Interwoven with Ginny’s story are the stories of the two men she loves—Dave, who endures the hardships of air combat in the South Pacific, and Matt, who grows from West Point cadet to veteran cavalry officer, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and across Germany. After much of his platoon is killed in a needless firefight, and he has a failed love affair with an English girl, Matt feels he loses all those he loves. In a Europe left in ruins by the War, Matt overcomes his fear of loving again and teaches Ginny that despite loss, she must go on to live life and find new love.

I'm a successful nonfiction writer, so why now a novel?

I grew up hearing stories of World War II. My parents’ lives, even their marriage, were shaped by it. After the death of my father and with a long and successful career as a nature writer under my belt, I felt driven to write their story. The result is Purple Hearts, a fictionalized account of my parents’ lives during World War II.

War made my mother a widow at 22, though she would not know it for nearly three years. In 1943, Mom’s first husband, Don Hathaway, a B-24 pilot, was shot down and missing in action in the South Pacific. Trapped between grief and the hope Don might still be alive, she joined the Red Cross and was sent to France. Dad, a West Point cadet on Pearl Harbor Day, fought across Germany under General Patton. He was among the first Americans to enter Berlin. Mom and Dad met at a Red Cross club in occupied Germany. But over their developing relationship lingered the ghost of Don, who might still return from the War.

Researching the book took me on an incredible journey, gave me great insight into my parents as vital young people fighting to protect the world from fascism. And learning the craft of writing fiction has been marvelous, painful, a great deal of work, and a great joy.

I followed my father’s wartime bootsteps across Germany. I visited the French village where Mom ran a Red Cross club, and met two lovely ladies in their 70s who had worked for her when they were teenagers. Mme Henriette clutched my hand and wept when we were introduced. "When I see you, I see your mother's face!" she said in rapid French.

I got letters and photos from men who had flown with Don Hathaway and still remember him, even after 60 years. Tears ran down my face when I looked at the picture of Don and his 9 crewmen grinning in front of their B-24 -- handsome, vital young Americans who would soon be killed in service of their country. As always, truth is stranger than fiction. I fabricated a plot twist to have the pilot’s buddy be pulled off the final, fatal mission so he could survive to tell the wife after the War what had happened . Then I got a call from a man who had flown with Don. “I was Hathaway’s co-pilot,” he told me, “but I didn’t fly on that mission.”

I hope that Purple Hearts will capture your interest and your heart, as it has mine.