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Purple Hearts
by Mary Taylor Young
A novel of World War II, based upon my parents' lives
** this just-finished novel is not yet published **
STORY SYNOPSIS
It’s December,
1941, and privileged college girl Ginny Conrad is eager to break free of her mother’s expectations and become a newspaper
reporter. Her mother, Nell, has groomed Ginny to be a socialite and uses her fragile emotional
state to keep her daughter tied to her. Nell lives trapped between grief and hope, waiting
for the return of Ginny’s younger brother, Bertie, who disappeared 10 years earlier. After Pearl Harbor, denied a newspaper job except
as a society reporter, Ginny marries her boyfriend, Dave. When he is shot down and declared
missing-in-action, Ginny finds herself trapped, like Nell, between grief and hope. Defying
her mother, Ginny learns to fly with the intention of joining the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). When that program is abruptly cancelled, she impulsively volunteers as a Red Cross “doughnut
dolly” in France, where she endures
the challenges and horrors of war. Matured into a confident and self-reliant woman, she still lives in limbo as she waits
to hear news of her husband.
The War ends and Ginny becomes the director of a Red Cross club
in occupied Germany. She struggles to reconcile her growing
feelings for Matt, a battle-seasoned officer, with her sense of loyalty to Dave,
who may still return from the War. When Ginny gives in to her love for Matt, she is overcome
with guilt. Torn between the man of her past and the man who offers a future, she angrily sends Matt
away. When Dave is declared dead, Ginny feels she has lost both men she loved. Nell
urges her to come home to wait for Dave as she waits for Bertie. Ginny leaves the Red Cross
but remains in Europe on her own. Fulfilling her early career goal by becoming a reporter for the overseas
edition of the Stars and Stripes newspaper, she seeks out Matt to make a new life with him.
Interwoven with Ginny’s story are the stories of the two
men she loves—Dave, who endures the hardships of air combat in the South Pacific, and Matt, who grows from West Point
cadet to veteran cavalry officer, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and across Germany. After much of his platoon is killed
in a needless firefight, and he has a failed love affair with an English girl, Matt feels he
loses all those he loves. In a Europe left in ruins by the War, Matt overcomes his fear of loving again and teaches Ginny
that despite loss, she must go on to live life and find new love.
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I'm a successful nonfiction writer, so why now a novel?
I grew up hearing stories of World War II. My parents’ lives,
even their marriage, were shaped by it. After the death of my father and with a long and successful career as a nature writer
under my belt, I felt driven to write their story. The result is Purple Hearts,
a fictionalized account of my parents’ lives during World War II.
War made my mother a widow at 22, though she would not know it
for nearly three years. In 1943, Mom’s first husband, Don Hathaway, a B-24 pilot, was shot down
and missing in action in the South Pacific. Trapped between grief and the hope Don might still
be alive, she joined the Red Cross and was sent to France.
Dad, a West Point cadet on Pearl Harbor Day, fought across Germany
under General Patton. He was among the first Americans to enter Berlin.
Mom and Dad met at a Red Cross club in occupied Germany. But
over their developing relationship lingered the ghost of Don, who might still return from the
War.
Researching the book took me on an incredible journey, gave me
great insight into my parents as vital young people fighting to protect the world from fascism. And learning the craft of
writing fiction has been marvelous, painful, a great deal of work, and a great joy.
I followed my father’s wartime bootsteps across Germany.
I visited the French village where Mom ran a Red Cross club, and met two lovely ladies in their 70s who had worked
for her when they were teenagers. Mme Henriette clutched my hand and wept when we were introduced. "When I see you, I see
your mother's face!" she said in rapid French.
I got letters and photos from men who had flown with Don
Hathaway and still remember him, even after 60 years. Tears ran down my face when I looked
at the picture of Don and his 9 crewmen grinning in front of their B-24 -- handsome, vital young Americans who would soon
be killed in service of their country. As always, truth is stranger than fiction. I
fabricated a plot twist to have the pilot’s buddy be pulled off the final, fatal mission so he could survive to tell
the wife after the War what had happened . Then I got a call from a man who had flown with Don.
“I was Hathaway’s co-pilot,” he told me, “but I didn’t fly on that mission.”
I hope that Purple Hearts will capture your interest
and your heart, as it has mine.
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