Q: Why did you choose to write this book as a novel instead of a history?
A: Let me be clear about something: I’m a novelist, not a historian. Historical figures and events inspire my imagination to go to work creating and developing characters and putting them into action. For me, real life is a jumping-off point for creativity. When I started telling people that I was working on a book about women Olympians from 1936, I tended to be met with looks of confusion. “I didn’t realize women were even in the Olympics back then,” friends would say. That was all the confirmation I needed that this book was a good idea, so I decided to make it my mission to introduce readers to these women Olympians and their amazing stories, but the historical record contains many gaps and inconsistencies because their experiences and accomplishments weren’t taken very seriously and documented. I used old newspapers to piece together what happened, along with several biographies and documentaries on these athletes. All the unknowns made for a fertile landscape to craft a novel.
For example, aside from general biographical information, little can be found about Louise’s life. When I first started reading about her hometown of Malden, Massachusetts, I discovered that the town has a World War I monument, erected in 1920, but in 2017, historians determined that the list of names on the commemorative plaque was incomplete, and a movement got under way to create a new monument to recognize all the veterans who had been left off—African Americans, women, and others. Reading about this monument led me to create the Uncle Freddie character and imagine the challenges that a young Louise would face.
Q: So what changes did you make from the real history of these women?
A: Aside from the timing of Betty’s plane crash and the very little I could find about Louise’s life, I followed the biographical milestones of these real women’s lives and used them to create scenes, imagining the dialogue and the inner lives of these characters. People from this generation didn’t tend to talk about their feelings, so I had to imagine what they felt about most of their victories and disappointments.
One of the most complicated sections of this story to figure out was how the women’s relay team was selected for the 1932 Olympics. The accounts of what happened at the Brown Palace Hotel, the encounter with Babe Didrikson on the train, and the existence of the NAACP’s telegram to the women’s track and field coaching staff were confirmed by numerous sources, and all of these incidents led me to believe that racism played a forceful role in deciding which four women would run in the relay. The fact that many of the team portraits in Los Angeles did not include Louise and Tidye supported this view. By studying old reports, newspaper accounts, and photos and employing common sense, I was able to assemble a theory about how the Olympic Committee approached selecting the women’s relay team. In short, its process was inconsistent, subject to political influence, and beset by racism and gender discrimination.
Without twenty-four-hour television news and social media, people in the 1920s and 1930s were not always as aware of what was happening beyond their local community, so my portrayal of Betty as an advocate for women athletes following the 1928 Olympics is exaggerated, but I wanted to depict the debate that was happening firsthand through a character. Similarly, news of the potential boycott of the Berlin Olympics was widespread, but unlike Jesse Owens, none of these women went on the record to describe their position on the topic, so I did my best to show the range of feelings the athletes might have felt about the prospect of not competing. Of all the women, Helen was the most knowledgeable about the topic and had read Mein Kampf prior to visiting Germany. The language of the boycott letters included in this novel is quoted from the original one she collected during her travels in 1936.
Unfortunately, historical events don’t always happen in the order that best suits a novelist’s desire for a perfect story arc, so I altered the timing of some events to fit within a tighter narrative of braiding three characters’ journeys together. As mentioned earlier, I moved Betty’s plane crash up a year to escalate the drama leading to the 1932 Olympics. Additionally, the 1936 party on Pfaueninsel Island happened at the close of the Olympics, but I moved it to the opening to build dramatic tension about the risks these women faced and to end the story with the excitement of the final relay race. To the best of my knowledge, Ruth Haslie had no Jewish heritage, but I wanted to bring the issue of the threat Nazis posed to German Jewry closer to the American athletes. The scene during which Helen met Hitler is based on their real encounter, detailed in Helen’s Olympic diary and described to her biographer, but his parting warning to Helen to be careful is fictional.
Adolf Hitler requested to meet with Helen Stephens after she won the 100-meter sprint at the 1936 Olympics. (William Woods University Records [CA6180], The State Historical Society of Missouri, Manuscript Collection)
Q: Can you describe your research process?
A: I always start off by reading everything I can find on a topic: books, academic and journalistic articles, newspapers—all of it. I take notes and start imagining my characters and their journeys. Librarians, historical society archivists, and journalists emailed me scanned yearbook pages and hard-to-find old newspaper stories, the primary sources that
