Two Sequels, Too Many Pages, and a Lot of Pigeons
Every week I promise myself I will post to the blog. And every week I rediscover how easily I lie to myself. Finally, here I am with an update. If you’ve been following my writing journey, you know that The Duty of Memory was a labor of love—and a lesson in how easily a story can grow beyond what you ever intended. At one point, that book stretched well past 500 pages. I eventually trimmed it down below 400, cutting chapter after chapter (and sometimes entire arcs) to make it readable. And just when I thought I’d tamed the beast, I found even more material. It turns out there was simply too much story for one book. So here we are: I’m now writing two sequels—The Tailor (Bruno Radziminski’s story) and The Horseman (Patrick Hovelacque’s story).
**Splitting the Seams **
The irony? My “too much” problem and my “not enough” problem were diametrically opposed. For Bruno Radziminski, I was overflowing with source material. My father stayed in touch with Bruno from 1944 until his death in 1984—a remarkable forty-year friendship. I grew up hearing stories about Bruno, visiting his family in Germany, and playing with his sons, Michel and Daniel. Years later, Daniel shared with me the stories that his father had told him. Add to that a mountain of documents my incredible researcher, Franck Signorile, unearthed from the French archives and NARA, and suddenly I had a historian’s dream—and an editor’s nightmare. Bruno was taken prisoner at Dunkirk, and I originally wrote several chapters exploring his time as a POW. To get below 350 pages, though, I had to cut most of it. Even the fascinating bit about Bruno’s carrier pigeons got reduced to half a page! Those pigeons, by the way, were critical messengers during WWII—over 250,000 of them served, achieving a 95% success rate in delivering messages when radios failed. Whole books have been written about these feathered heroes, and Bruno deserved his share of that spotlight. After publishing The Duty of Memory, I learned I’d made a few wrong assumptions about Bruno’s regiment. I thought he’d been part of a tank unit, but Daniel and Michel gently corrected me. A 2025 trip to France and a careful reread of Bruno’s original 1945 debriefing confirmed they were right—I was wrong. He was part of the Siege of Lille, one of the French First Army’s last stands before Dunkirk. The new book, The Tailor, tells that story as it truly happened. Stay tuned for updates.