Pauline Barclay : Yesterday Uncovered - WW1 with Broken Faces by Deborah Carr

This month on Yesterday Uncovered we slip back to WW1 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War

During November there will be three authors talking about their books set in this period and one very special guest.

Sitting, in the shade, on a recliner at the side of my pool is Deborah Carr, the author of, Broken Faces, so please help yourself to a glass of chilled bubbly, a plate of tapas, then make yourself comfortable and enjoy slipping back to the time of WW1

Tell us a little about yourself

Thanks for inviting me, Pauline, it’s great to be here.

I live on the island of Jersey and can see the French coast from my bedroom window at night. My husband and I share our home with our three rescue dogs and my family believe that I’m slowly filling my house with these rescues to make up for my two children, now 27 and 24 having left home – I think they could be right.

I’ve written for years and Broken Faces was my debut novel set during WW1. HarperImpulse recently published my second novel set partially during this period, The Poppy Field, to commemorate the centenary of the end of WW1. I also write contemporary romance series as Georgina Troy and psychological suspense as Ella Drummond.

What inspired you to write about and around WW1?

My paternal great-grandfather, 2^nd Lt Charles Wood of the 17^th Lancers served in India, where my grandmother was born, and also in WW1. He died just before Christmas in 1922 and my great-grandmother was so upset that he’d left her – poor man, it wasn’t by choice – that she burnt all his photos. I was researching his life looking for a photo for my father who apparently looks like him. I never found that photo, but did find a love of the period and having ridden horses when I was growing up, setting a novel during the four years of that war about two cavalrymen and the two women in their lives seemed to make sense.

Tell us little about the story and its plot without giving too much away

The story is about four friends and how their lives are changed forever during the 1914-1918 war. Freddie Chevalier, is a farmer’s son from Jersey. He joins the Lancers to be with his closest school friend, Charles Baldwyn, a rather badly-behaved man from an aristocratic family. One of them is terribly injured. Charles is engaged to Meri, a wealthy American girl who Freddie is secretly in love with. Something happens between Meri and Freddie, which devastates Charles. Charles’ younger sister, Lexi is in love with Freddie, but although he’s fond of her, he still sees her as his best-friend’s younger sister, rather than the beautiful woman she has become. Meri becomes a nurse and Lexi a volunteer in the war effort and each of them soon discover that war is far more shocking than they had imagined.

Is any part of the story based on facts / real events?

I like to keep true to historical facts and always hope that a reader will not only enjoy reading my books but discover things they hadn’t previously known. I work out what historical events I would like to include in the book and write the story around them.

Are any of the characters based on someone real or are they pure fiction?

I’ve based Freddie on my paternal great-grandfather in that he’s in the Lancers and they’re both very good looking (or so we were told by my grandmother) and blonde. Charles’ family live at a beautiful estate in Shropshire and although none of the characters are like my ex-husband, his family do have a lovely estate and I based the Somerton Hall in the book on their home.

If research was necessary what did this involve?

I did a lot of research and took over a year to write this book. The hardest part about the research is what to leave out. Very little ends up in the book, but the research does help ensure that an essence of the period filters into the story, so the reader can have a sense of how it was to live during that time.

I did a lot of research online, some through very old books that I sourced through charitable book sales. I also visited Paris and was lucky enough to discover and be allowed into the building where the plaster-of-Paris masks written about in my book were made. It was surreal and memorable experience walking through the passage way, into a peaceful courtyard and up the wooden stairs retracing the steps of men from one hundred years ago as they went to have the plaster of Paris casts made of their damaged faces from which their masks were then made.