A SECRET MAP

For the last couple of years, I’ve been working on my first novel, TRAIN, a historical thriller for young adults, based on real events.

Lost In Berlin

A while back, eager for honest feedback, one of my readers suggested I do a better job with the novel’s “logistics of space.”

The Roma and Jewish teenagers at the heart of TRAIN are fleeing their homes. They crawl through the back gardens of Berlin and cower in damp basements. But, in an earlier draft, I hadn’t yet painted a clear picture of those houses, streets, and hiding places.

Despite chases across the city, I’d left out journey times across Hitler’s capital. I was depriving my characters—and my readers—of directions, times of day, proximity to key landmarks.

I’d paid lots of attention to character arcs and plot, and I’d ensured historical accuracy, but I hadn’t provided enough details of Nazi Germany to make those ten days in early 1943 come alive.

Writing From Photographs

I needed to get to know the geography of Berlin. But during the early writing phase, I was nervous to read beyond what was necessary for historical research, mostly because I didn’t want the descriptive prose of other writers to influence my own writing style or my characters’ voices.

First, I browsed photographs. Online searches brought up vivid black and white images of Berlin’s monuments and parks. Tram tracks embedded in the cobblestones crisscrossed and split, weaving themselves between grand buildings from which Swastika banners hung, dead, in the winter air.

I got the hang of describing the novel’s spaces. But I still needed to include journey times and directions for my characters’ routes of escape.

Finding My Way

I’d visited Berlin once before, but only for a week or so. I didn’t have a good sense of the city. There was no map in my head.

I searched online for precise directions—by foot—from the Moabit neighborhood to Charité Hospital; then directions—by car—from the Jewish Community Center on Rosen Street to Marzahn, the site of a Nazi camp for Roma families.

From my laptop screen to my head and into my manuscript, my characters began to find their way.

I created a single online map. On the map, I marked every event of my novel’s plot. And every home and workplace belonging to my central and minor characters. Every front step. Every meeting place. Every escape path, from Hackesher Market to St. Hedwig’s Cathedral, from Gestapo-raided homes to improvised hiding places.

I downloaded an up-to-date satellite image of the terrain; the ultimate bird’s-eye view of Berlin.

A Secret Map

But I had a problem. I’d superimposed Nazi-era history onto a contemporary landscape. My manuscript and I were full of doubts.

Did certain streets and public parks even exist in 1943? Had the West German or East German governments in post-war Europe moved a road? A bridge? Which neighborhoods had witnessed war up-close? Which buildings had the British warplanes destroyed?

When I noticed Google Earth’s “historical imagery” icon, I literally gasped and danced around my living room.

As if uncovering the key to a hidden passageway, caught in a sudden Internet-trance, I found myself sliding the years back to 1943 and staring in amazement at an aerial photograph of war-torn Berlin.

Comparing the modern-day map with this digitized historical artifact (the 1943 aerial photograph was likely taken from a British fighter plane), I discovered redirected streets and old buildings. I zoomed in on strange unfamiliar shapes. To figure out what they were, I compared search engine results with old-fashioned printed books in my home library.

I found that I’d placed the secret meeting place of two central characters, Alexander and Marko, close to a Nazi watchtower. I’d positioned the home of Elise and her fragmented Nazi family within walking distance of The Fountain of Fairy Tales. I realized that the British had bombed St. Hedwig’s Cathedral on the same day as a key turning point of my story.

Altered Fates

Just as some roads and houses of Berlin had been moved and rebuilt over seventy years, the plot of my historical thriller began to shift.

Tsura, a young Roma woman and anti-Nazi dissident, must now avoid certain cross-streets for fear of running into German soldiers.

Ruth, a Catholic girl dreading the deportation of her Jewish stepbrother, now becomes exhausted and pessimistic after a long trudge uphill as she passes bombed landmarks and houses that are still burning.

In moments of fear and reflection, the teenagers are now drawn to places of their childhoods. My rewriting of the story to reflect the nuances of history altered my characters responses, their decisions, and ultimately their fates.

While the key historical events of TRAIN stand in place, its fictional teenagers have become more real, their actions more credible. The precise moments, movements, and twists of the story are now more satisfying, more authentic, more compelling (to me, at least!).

As I work to finish editing my manuscript, I expect to discover a few more secrets of Holocaust history that, I hope, will surprise my future readers and, I know, will surprise me, too.