Despite heroic attempts to save it, Anne Frank’s beloved horse chestnut tree, noted three times in her annex diary, fell over in a windstorm on my birthday in 2010. I had no idea that years later, I would receive an invitation to an event at a nearby university from Professor Elaine Leeder, Dean of the School of Sciences at Sonoma State University. After an arduous application process, the university had been selected as one of only eleven sites in the United States to receive a rare sapling propagated from the majestic original. For three years, the university had nurtured the quarantined tree. Now, at last, it was ready to be moved to the Erna and Arthur Salm Holocaust & Genocide Memorial Grove. Attendees passed shovels around, tossing dirt onto its blossoming roots. (My daughter enjoyed that part very much and returned home a muddy mess.) Four years later, I’m happy to report that the tree thrives, and this symbol of freedom lives on.
The idea for Stolen Secrets took root long before, in 1996, when I was eight months pregnant with my first child. As I researched Anne Frank’s journey by train to a concentration camp, I stumbled upon her full name on a roster: Annelies Marie Frank. Instant chills. I knew at that moment that I was going to name my newborn after the teenage heroine who hid from the Nazis for two years before being discovered and sent to a concentration camp. Two decades later, my editor-at-home, Annalise, has been made to read every word in this book at least four times. (Ah, the perils of being the offspring of an author.)
Admittedly, twenty years is a long time to cling to an idea. I hesitated about writing it because I knew I didn’t have my writer “sea legs” yet. The subject was too big, too important, to do what I felt would be an amateur job. It wasn’t until I finished three unrelated manuscripts that I felt ready to tackle the storyline.
At first, I felt uncomfortable altering a story belonging to a sacred, historical figure. I knew it could be challenging and, in some cases, destructive to fictionalize nonfiction. For years, I was the parent who wouldn’t let my children watch such films as Walt Disney Pictures’ Pocahontas, because I’d learned that parts of the plot were historically inaccurate. What if young minds absorbed invented plot points as fact? Parents and teachers should insist that children know the real story. Yet sometimes it’s important for authors to fill in the blanks when specific information is unavailable, as long as these fictional details are judiciously evaluated. It’s my belief that authors should do their best to honor the authentic character and experiences of any real person. Invention should be duly noted so that it’s not mistaken as truth.
It took me some time to figure out how to write Stolen Secrets in a way that didn’t invent a “new” Anne Frank. I made myself some promises: First, I would do my best to verify the accuracy of all historical information appearing in this book. (See the Acknowledgments page for a list of experts who helped in this regard); and second, I would avoid falsifying Anne or what she might have experienced. As it turned out, I was unable to do this entirely within the context of fiction. In Stolen Secrets, I imagined what happened to Anne in the concentration camps and invented the possibility of a Bergen-Belsen diary. No one truly knows the horrors that the annex residents experienced.
Now that I had come to terms with how to handle the material, I was left with several intriguing questions, such as, What if Anne Frank hadn’t died? What if she had concluded that she would have a more meaningful role in Jewish history as a victim instead of a survivor? My experience with my stepfather’s Alzheimer’s made me realize that this heart-wrenching disease that whittles down memory and confuses facts could be the right vehicle for exploring how guilt might rise to the surface after decades of justification and intentional deception. Intertwining these concepts was simultaneously fun, difficult, and heartbreaking.
A note about Anne Frank’s annex diary: Most adults remember reading this classic in middle school. While writing Stolen Secrets, I learned that this vivid firsthand account of Jewish life during World War II is no longer offered on many school reading lists. As Livvy explains to Franklin D., Anne Frank’s story has inspired poems, short stories, novels, operas, ballets, plays, movies, and other art forms. I fear that, without context, art that explores history could grow obsolete. Middle-school teachers, if you are not already doing so, please consider introducing Anne Frank’s diary to your students.
My deepest desire is that Stolen Secrets will inspire readers to seek out this young woman’s thoughts and experiences. Perhaps they will head to the library to check out Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Maybe they will write me if they do. I would love nothing more than to wallpaper my home office with such letters. And perhaps one day, like Livvy, her mother, and myself, these readers will travel to Amsterdam to experience the Anne Frank House where eight people were forced to live in tight quarters, clinging to their dreams of the future.
While the outcome is tragic, there is undeniable joy in Anne’s words, perceptions, and dreams. She became a published writer, her voice reaching sixty nations. She proved that while life can be short, hope is inextinguishable.