Bird’s Eye View: WWII Historical Novel Giveaway

My new friend and fellow author, Elinor Florence, recently released her debut novel, Bird’s Eye View. She has been doing a blog tour and fittingly – given the subject of the book – it ends today, on Remembrance Day. Bird’s Eye View tells the story of a young woman from the prairies whose home town becomes an air training base. Rose Jolliffe travels overseas, joins the air force and becomes an interpreter of aerial photographs, spying on the enemy from the sky, searching out camouflaged bomb targets on the continent.

1. Bird's Eye View - Cover Image

I became acquainted with Elinor because we share a publisher, Dundurn Press of Toronto. My book Polar Winds: A Century of Flying the North was released in September, and hers in October. We also share a common interest in Canadian history, although my book is non-fiction, and hers is fact-based fiction.

DMC: Your heroine Rose Jolliffe joins the air force and becomes an aerial photographic interpreter. What is that?

EF: It’s an art that sprang up after the fall of the European continent to Germany. The Allies had no way of finding out what the enemy was up to, except for spies on the ground, radio transmissions, and aerial reconnaissance. Because aerial photos were black and white, often blurry, and difficult to decipher, an entire new skill was developed. It was called interpretation because it was like learning a new language. One early reconnaissance pilot predicted that women would be especially good at this because they must have the patience of Job and the skill of a good darner of socks! He was correct. Women were good at it. More than half of the 600 photo interpreters who worked at the Allied Central Interpretation headquarters at RAF Medmenham in England were women. This is a photo interpreter studying a photograph while two Canadian pilots look on. She’s probably trying to determine if their bombs hit the target.

2. woman studies aerial photo   DMC: What is that device she is using?

EF: The interpreters used an instrument called a stereoscope that allowed them to see the ground in three dimensions. The pilot had to fly the plane straight and level, while the camera took two photos, a split second apart. When the “stereo pair,” as they were called, were lined up under the stereoscope, then each eye was looking at a slightly different photograph, and the result was to see the image in three dimensions. It really is quite magical, when you think about it.

3. stereoscope DMC: Did the interpreters make any significant discoveries?

EF: It was a British woman, a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force member named Constance Babington Smith, who discovered the first weapon of mass destruction in history. “Babs” found a miniature winged pilotless aircraft on an aerial photograph taken on the northern German coastline at a place called Peenemunde. That was the jet-propelled V-1 weapon called the flying bomb. The Allies immediately destroyed Peenemunde and set back the manufacture of this deadly weapon by six months, influencing the outcome of the war. This aerial photograph shows Peenemunde after the bombing raid.

4. Peenemunde after bombing

DMC: How is Canada’s role in wartime portrayed in your novel?

EF: My heroine sees the entire progress of the war from a uniquely Canadian perspective. She interprets the photos of the raid on Dieppe, for example. Her brother is flying a Spitfire. Her friends are in Bomber Command’s 6 Group, in Yorkshire. And throughout the book, she is receiving letters from her mother and her best friend June, describing what’s happening back on the home front.

DMC: Did you visit any of the locales used in your book?

EF: Yes, the headquarters for photo interpretation was a converted mansion called RAF Medmenham. It’s now a luxury hotel called Danesfield House. My husband and I visited the hotel, and while we were walking around the grounds discussing the past, we were approached by a distinguished white-haired woman who had served at RAF Medmenham during the war! It was the most extraordinary coincidence. We whisked her off for lunch and I plied her with questions, and some of her tidbits I used in my novel. Eileen Scott has passed away, but I’m still in contact with her son. Here’s a photo of the former RAF Medmenham as it appears today.

5. Danesfield House

About the Author:

6. Elinor Florence -- Head Shot

 Elinor Florence grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, a former World War Two training airfield. She worked as a newspaper and magazine editor, and was a regular writer for Reader’s Digest before turning to fiction. Married with three grown daughters, Elinor lives in the tiny but perfect mountain resort of Invermere, British Columbia. She loves village life, thrift stores, antiques, and old houses. You can read more about her, and sign up for her blog called Wartime Wednesdays, at www.elinorflorence.com. She is also on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and Pinterest. Bird’s Eye View is available at bookstores everywhere, and as an ebook.    

 

The Giveaway!

Elinor has generously provided me with a signed copy of her book to give away to a lucky reader. If you’d like to enter, please do one of the following (or all to increase your odds of winning) before 11:59 MST on Tuesday, November 18, 2014. The winner will be drawn via random number generator the following day and announced on Facebook and/or Twitter, as well as contacted directly via email if you have provided that information.

1. Leave a comment on this post letting me know why you like reading historical novels.

2. Tweet about this post on Twitter and tag @danicanuck and @florencewriter in it.

3. Post a Facebook comment about this giveaway, including a link back to this post.

Good luck!

7 thoughts on “Bird’s Eye View: WWII Historical Novel Giveaway

  1. I love reading in general, but reading a fictional book that has true history embedded is awesome. You get to learn about something cool while also exploring the author’s imagination! I can’t believe how much Scottish history I’ve learned since starting the Outlander series!! To learn about Canadian women in WW2 would be even better!!

  2. Historical novels can often express and represent the personalities over a broader range of social subjects than a non-fiction book.

  3. Historical Novels are usually close to the facts and they make you want to find out more..My contact with Elinor came through trying to contact people who were connected to my uncle during the war, and we were both researching people.

  4. I couldn’t agree with you more! I’ve heard of lots of people who have gotten hooked on the Outlander series. 🙂

  5. Reading briefly about the fact that Elinor grew up on a farm that was once an air training base really brings back some great memories for me.
    I learned to fly at the Calgary Flying Club in the early 1970s after growing up on a farm myself in central Alberta. Our farm was located in an area that was, as I learned much later in life, a designated ‘practice area’ for the RCAF base Penhold Alberta. I grew up watching yellow Harvards in the skies overhead.
    That is where my interest in aviation began, but learning to fly was an impossible dream, because I had been afflicted with rheumatic fever at age 5 which had left me with a heart murmur.
    But in 1971 at age 25 I passed the DOT medical, and was approved to hold “any type of pilots license”. So I was off!
    My commercial license and first flying job followed in 1974, and I eventually accumulated just short of 7000 hours before my first open heart surgery which put an abrupt end to my dream.
    One of the things that I really enjoyed was to climb into my own light airplane (I owned several over the years, and my favourite had to be my 1952 Cessna 170B) and fly out to one of the many abandoned WWII training bases that could be found all over southern Alberta. Many of these were now vacant, but the runways were still there, and quite safe for use by something like the 170. One of my favourites was the old base near Vulcan Alberta, called “Kirkaldy”. There were still many of the old hangars standing there, and the runways were in really good condition. I would park the airplane and sit with my back up against one of the hangar walls, and just imagine what the scene would have been in the early 1940’s when the place would have been a beehive of activity and the skies alive with the sound of many different types of aircraft engines. Sometimes I would be sure that I could hear the sound of a Merlin in the distance.
    I just turned 68 years last week, and those days are far behind, but the memories live on. And thanks to people like Elinor and Danielle, there are lots of reminders around, and still lots of opportunities to share in the memories of others.
    Many thanks to these two ladies and so many others who strive to take old guys like me down memory lane, and to give younger generations a peek at what has gone on in the past that provided all of us with the wonderful country that we enjoy today.
    Rob McCaghren
    Calgary Alberta

  6. Rob:

    Thanks so much for sharing your amazing memories and for your kind words. It sounds like you persevered with your passion for aviation despite your childhood health problems. That is always so inspiring!

    Hope to see you at the Canadian Aviation Historical Society meeting tomorrow night in Calgary!

    Cheers,
    Danielle

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