Every book has its list of people who helped it on its way. In this case, this book wouldn’t have existed—wouldn’t even have had a hope of existing—without the incredible generosity and kindness of the librarians at Smith College Special Collections. It is a truth universally acknowledged that librarians are heroes. These librarians aren’t just heroes, they’re superheroes. I stumbled on the Smith College Relief Unit back in 2018 via Ruth Gaines’s Ladies of Grécourt, an account of her time in the Somme. The incongruity of it struck me. A group of American college women in the Somme, right in the middle of World War I. What were they doing there? Who were they? I gobbled up all the publicly available material, with their tantalizing scraps of period letters, and then made the happy discovery that there was a treasure trove of primary sources in Northampton. There was just one wrinkle. I had, at the time, a one-year-old and a five-year-old. There was no way I was spending three months in the archives in Northampton. A day trip was a stretch; a week was an impossible dream.
I emailed Smith College Special Collections. Without blinking an eye, the amazing super-librarians of Smith College digitized thousands of pages of material for me: letters, journals, reports, lists, photos. There were faded music scores of the canticles the Smith Unit learned to sing for mass with the villagers. There were doggerel poems handed around on Christmas Day, memorializing each Unit member. There were photographs with handwritten inscriptions. I could see the stationery they’d used, cadged from Paris hotels; the colors of ink; where they’d crossed things out. There are no words for how grateful I am to Roxanne Daniel of Smith College Special Collections for bringing the archives to me when I couldn’t come to them. This book wouldn’t be here but for you.
I am also very grateful to Professor Jennifer Hall-Witt of Smith College who is currently writing a monograph about the Smith College Relief Unit and was kind enough to answer emails from a random person claiming to be a historical novelist. Anyone wanting to know more about the real Unit and the context in which it was formed should run and buy her book as soon as it is available. (I, for one, cannot wait to read it.)
As always, huge thanks to my agent, Alexandra Machinist, who encouraged me to go chasing Smithies in the Somme. So many thanks to the team at William Morrow: to Rachel Kahan, editor extraordinaire, who took the Smithies to her heart (and coined the working title Smithies at War, which I’m still trying to remember is not the actual title of the book); to Elsie Lyons, cover design genius, who managed to work real Smithies, the real Grécourt gates, and real French villagers into the cover, and make it everything I ever wanted this cover to be; to Danielle Bartlett in publicity and Tavia Kowalchuk in marketing, there is no way to ever calculate how much I owe both of you for all you do and for your incredible patience with the five zillion “so I just had this thought . . .” emails you’ve fielded over the years.
I owe a special debt to my good friend Vicki Parsons, who, when I got stuck and wanted to scrap the whole thing, read the first few chapters and persuaded me to put down the coffee and step away from the delete button. (Okay, maybe not put down the coffee.) Perpetual thanks go to my sister, Brooke Willig, and my college roommate, Claudia Brittenham, who have now made it through twenty-one books’ worth of “are you around so I can talk book at you?” and haven’t yet blocked my number on their phones. I love you both. And your book instincts are impeccable. Speaking of talking book at people, hugs to Carlynn Houghton and her World War I literature class at Chapin who let me babble about Smithies at them for a whole class period (and didn’t make a break for the door).
Mille mercis to Professor Jessica Sturm, Chair of the French Department at Purdue, who served as French language consultant for this book, preventing me from any number of bêtises. All remaining Franglais is entirely the fault of the author and of the members of the Smith College Relief Unit, who persisted in peppering their letters home with French phrases of varying degrees of accuracy, some of which I suspect they made up to confuse future novelists.
Book people are the best people. I am endlessly grateful for the support, friendship, epic text chains, and unabashed enabling of my writing sisters, Beatriz Williams and Karen White; any excuse for lunch or a coffee with M.J. Rose, Lynda Loigman, and Alyson Richman; the fellowship and joy of the New York writers’ cabal, including, but not limited to, Amy Poeppel, Sally Koslow, Susie Orman Schnall, Fiona Davis, Jamie Brenner, and Nicola Harrison; wise advice and industry gossip with Andrea Katz, Suzanne Leopold, Bobbi Dumas, and Sharlene Martin Moore; and all the book bloggers, booksellers, and librarians to whom I owe so much (you know who you are!). Huge hugs to all of the readers I’ve gotten to know over Facebook, Instagram, and my website. I can’t tell you how much it means to know you’re there.
And, of course, there’s my family. With only a month until deadline on this book, New York plunged into lockdown and I suddenly found myself confined in my apartment with a two-year-old, a six-year-old, and my husband—and a Nespresso machine. (It’s very important to note the Nespresso machine, my first and best pandemic purchase, without which this book would not be here.) But, primarily, without my husband this book would not be here. He kept the kids at bay for three hours a day so I could work. Thanks are also due to my children, who only flooded the apartment once while I was trying to cadge extra writing time. And it was really only a small flood. So much love and thanks to my parents, who heroically took us in when my husband had to quarantine for two weeks and I still had Zoom book talks to do and deadlines to meet and no one to watch the kids while I did it. And to my siblings, who spend endless hours on FaceTime with my kindergartner while I sneakily try to get work done. I won the lottery when it comes to family members.
This book also owes a great deal to the Chapin School and its legendary headmistress, Mildred Berendsen. Full disclosure: I am not a Smithie. But I did have the incredible privilege of spending thirteen years at an all-girls school run by a Smithie. Our headmistress had been a scholarship girl at Smith. Every year, she would call us together and tell us how Smith had changed her life and how much we owed the world in exchange for the great gifts and opportunities that had been given us. When I stumbled on Ruth Gaines’s memoirs, when I read Harriet Boyd Hawes’s stirring call to action, when I dug into the Smith Unit’s alternately earnest and breezy accounts of their incredible work in the Somme, I could hear Mrs. Berendsen’s voice in my head, exhorting us to do more, to do better—but to do it with grace and dignity and a sense of humor. Smith shaped Mrs. Berendsen; Mrs. Berendsen shaped Chapin; and Chapin shaped me. Reading about the Smith Unit, I felt moved and grateful beyond words to be part of that lineage. It also struck me forcibly, while researching this book, how very much the Smith Unit belonged to the same world, shaped by the same ideals, motivated by the same principles, as their contemporaries: the founders and first generation of students at Chapin. I owe both Chapin and Mrs. Berendsen more than I can say—including my deep feeling of kinship with the women of the Smith Unit. To thee dear Alma Mater, indeed.
Last but not least, I would be remiss if I didn’t express my gratitude for the true heroes of this book: the real women of the Smith College Relief Unit, who plunged into a war zone, risking their lives to bring help and hope to women and children crushed between two armies. I only hope I did them justice.
Thank you all!