By Cecilia Nasmith
The resilience of the British in World War II is a standard to admire – and one of the stories that came out of that historic ordeal is the subject of Port Hope author Kurt Palka's new book.
The Orphan Girl is his eighth book from publisher McLelland & Stewart. Subtitled Courage Found and a Promise Kept, it explores a relationship between two women that sustains them both with what the author termed the long-term courage to hang on.
The younger woman is Kate Henderson, who has had her house bombed. She is injured and taken in by the other woman, Dr. Claire Giroux. A bond develops between them, and is challenged when the doctor's husband returns from the war.
“It's a look at relationships and friendships and a courage that can take you through difficult situations,” Palka summed up in a recent interview.
For this particular writer, the characters he creates drive everything. And as is the case with every person, what's past is prologue (to borrow from Shakespeare).
“How did life go for you? What happened to you? How did you handle that? My characters tell me,” he said.
“For a writer, I would have to say the best bits come from the subconscious, and it has been down there for a long time. It may have been buried since childhood – early impressions you picked up and put aside – but it's in there and suddenly they come knocking on the door and you can use them to give them to your characters that you are, in a sense, living with.
“There's some plotting, of course, but the detail and the meat of the story, the truth of the story comes from character. And, of course, character is a whole different thing altogether from personality.”
