An Ordinary Woman Who Changed the World
After a couple of weeks of beachside rest and relaxation, I’m flying to Melbourne on Friday to start the Victorian leg of the book tour. I’m looking forward to meeting more readers and sharing the story behind The Mademoiselle Alliance with you. You can find book tour details further down in this post, as well as a round up of all the other wonderful things that have been happening since the last newsletter, not the least of which was seeing The Mademoiselle Alliance hit No. 2 on the bestseller charts for books written by Aussie authors, No. 10 on the overall bestseller chart, which includes all genres and all authors, and No. 4 in Dymocks stores, which is the largest book chain in Australia!
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again—thank you so much for all of your support. I definitely could not have done any of this without you, nor without our wonderful booksellers. I thought I’d dedicate this newsletter to the incredible Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, whose story I’m telling in The Mademoiselle Alliance, and who is one of the most amazing women from history that I’ve ever had the good fortune to write about. So, if you love finding out more about forgotten but extraordinary women from history, then stay tuned.
In the meantime, don’t forget that you can come to Paris and Lisbon with me next year on the holiday of a lifetime! We’ll be visiting lots of the exclusive and fascinating places I’ve been to when researching my novels, including fashion ateliers, beautiful French buildings, afternoon tea at the Ritz and lots more. Find out more by clicking the link below.
Your Special Invitation to Come to Paris and Lisbon With Me! Yes, For Real!
Remember when I went to Paris and spent the morning at a 19th century atelier where they make the silk flowers that couturiers use to adorn their dresses? Or when I wiled away a day at La Galerie Dior admiring all the beautiful gowns made by the House of Dior from the 1950s through to the present day? Or when I took a walking tour through the Marais dis…
For now, let’s move onto Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, rally-car driver, pilot, journalist, mother-of-two, as well as the only woman to lead a Resistance network in WWII France.
If you need a dose of inspiration, her story—of an ordinary woman who really did change the world—is meant for you.
It’s so easy these days to feel disempowered, to forget that we have agency and can take action to fight for a better world. When I say that Marie-Madeleine was an ordinary woman, I mean that she was just like you and me. She had no formal training in espionage or the military, but she knew that if she simply hoped for a better future, that future would not arrive. She knew that hope was a passive thing and would get her nowhere. She knew she had to do something. And she did.
Here’s how her story began.
Learning to Be an Adventurer
To understand how Marie-Madeleine Fourcade became the only female leader of a resistance network in WWII it's important to go back to her childhood. She had an unusual upbringing, which I think forged her adventurous spirit from an early age.
Her father was posted to Shanghai for his job in shipping. It was usual in those days (1910s) for a wife and children to remain behind in France—back then, Shanghai was seen as an uncivilised kind of place. But Marie Madeleine's mother was something of an adventuress and, while she gave birth to Marie-Madeleine in Shanghai, she took all three of her children to live in Shanghai.
So, from a young age, Marie-Madeleine was experiencing a country and a way of life very different to France. And, according to Marie-Madeleine's biographer Michèle Cointet, Marie-Madeleine and her siblings weren't just restricted to the French concession in Shanghai, but were allowed to roam relatively freely through the city in the company of their nanny. Marie-Madeleine details to her biographer the lasting impression that the sights and sounds of Shanghai had on her and she also talks about how she truly felt a sense of the vastness of the world when watching the ships in the harbour in Shanghai.
Sadly her father died when she was in her teens and the family returned to France, settling in Paris. All this time, time Marie-Madeleine had been playing the piano for eight hours a day; her ambition was to become a concert pianist. She was accepted into a music conservatory in Paris and continued to work towards this goal, but perhaps she found bourgeois Parisian life a little dull after Shanghai and, at the age of 17, she met and fell in love with a military intelligence officer named Edouard Méric.
Love and Morocco
While I'm sure she loved Edouard, I do wonder if she also fell in love with the fact that he was about to be posted to Morocco—for someone who’d grown up in Shanghai, Morocco seemed like an excellent place to experience her next adventure.
When Marie-Madeleine arrived in Morocco at age 18 as a new bride married to a man she'd known for only a very short time, she threw herself into life. This was 1920s Morocco and one of the first things she did was to learn the Arabic language, which was a highly unusual thing for a woman at that time. She also volunteered at a local women's clinic and helped deliver babies, and she often rode out on camelback on horseback with her husband to visit the local tribes.
As you might guess from my description thus far, Marie-Madeleine was a sociable, outgoing, gregarious person who had a lot of friends. She enjoyed music and dancing and was quite different to her husband who preferred a quieter life at home. He was also several years older than Marie-Madeleine and this difference in age, as well as their differences in temperament, meant that, after having two children, the couple decided to separate.
A Chance Encounter in Paris
Marie-Madeleine returned to Paris with her son Christian and her daughter Béatrice as a separated woman. This was pretty scandalous for the time and I like to think that Marie-Madeleine thought to herself, well, if you're going to judge me for my marital status, then I might as well go all out to really give you something to talk about.
She became a rally-car driver. Car rallies were big in Europe in the 1930s and people loved nothing more than to jump behind the wheel of a car and participate in the pan-European rallies that were taking place regularly. Marie-Madeleine and her Citroën did reasonably well in these rallies and she placed in a couple of them. That would probably be enough thrills and adventure for most people, but not for Marie-Madeleine! She also learned to fly aeroplanes, she worked as a journalist and she was a mother to her two children. When I tell this story I always say that she makes me feel like an underachiever, as if I need to go and get a few more hobbies!
This brings us to Marie-Madeleine in 1936 when she went to an evening salon at her sister's house and met a man who used the codename Navarre. He was having an argument with Charles de Gaulle at the time, and Marie-Madeleine was drawn into the conversation. From that moment on, her life changed.
She and Navarre joined forces to do everything they could to try to demonstrate to the French government and the French people exactly what Hitler was up to in Germany, that he was preparing for war, that France needed to organise herself against Germany—that they had a chance to stop the terrible future that was coming for them if only they would believe the evidence that Navarre and Marie Madeline were gathering and publishing in a newspaper. Sadly, that didn't happen. The Germans invaded France in 1940 and thus begins the main part of the story in The Mademoiselle Alliance.
Book Tour
If you’d like to me hear talk a little more about Marie-Madeleine and the writing of the book, then please come along to one of my next events.
VICTORIA
SORRENTO WRITERS FESTIVAL 26 April, 9am & 12pm. One session SOLD OUT, tickets available for my second session.
WAURN PONDS LIBRARY 28 April, 6pm. SOLD OUT, waitlist only.
BRIGHTON LIBRARY 29 April, 6pm. SOLD OUT
GISBORNE LIBRARY 30 April, 11am. SOLD OUT
CASTLEMAINE LIBRARY 30 April, 3pm. ONLY 7 TICKETS LEFT
BALLARAT MECHANICS INSTITUTE 1 May, 6pm
BENDIGO CAPITAL THEATRE 2 May, 6pm
WA
BOYA COMMUNITY CENTRE 5 May, 6pm
WANNEROO LIBRARY 8 May, 6pm. SOLD OUT
NEDLANDS LIBRARY 13 May, 6.15pm
RACHAEL JOHNS BOOK CLUB RETREAT 16-18 May
THE HERITAGE COLLECTIVE WINTER SALON SERIES 22 May, 6pm. BOOKING LINK TO COME
Quick Links
It’s been a busy month of interviews, as well as some much needed rest and relaxation at my beach house. Here are a few interviews, links and recommendationsthat you might be interested in:
Watch my interview with Jane Healey from the Historical Happy Hour below.
Read my interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly, where I discuss the process of writing The Mademoiselle Alliance in detail
Listen to my radio interview for 6PR Perth’s Remember When, where we dive in detail into Marie-Madeleine and her Resistance network, Alliance
Book recommendation: I’ve been reading Careless People by Sarah Wynne-Williams, her memoir of her time at Facebook, which is incredibly, shockingly eye-opening. It’s making it very hard for me to ever want to use Meta’s platforms (Facebook and Instagram) again, given how diabolical Facebook’s management are.
Watch recommendation: Yes, Adolescence is as good as everyone says it is. I watched it with my fifteen year old and my seventeen year old. It’s definitely one to sit down and watch with your kids, if they’re the right age.
That’s it from me for now! I’ll be back with another newsletter in early May where I’ll talk about little more about Marie-Madeleine’s wartime life and give you an update from the book tour! Have a lovely weekend everyone.
I'm 3/4 of the way through Mademoiselle Alliance and loving Marie-Madeleine. But I don't believe that she was the only woman to head a French Resistance network. I have read 2 books about Virginia Hall, an American woman who led a Resistance network affiliated with SOE, the British rival of MI6. She also had a limp, and she crossed the Pyrenees on foot and wooden leg.
I’m halfway through the book and have trouble putting it down. On holidays travelling so not able to pick it up as much as I’d like. I don’t like coming to the end of your books because it means having to wait for your next one.