Mitch Albom, THE LITTLE LIAR
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[1:03]Mitch album is the author of The Little Liar, a novel.
[1:06]This was the Zippy's book club pick for November.
[1:08]I hope you all read it.
[1:10]Author screenwriter Philanthropist journalist and broadcaster Mitch album is an inspiration
[1:15]around the world.
[1:16]He is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, which have collectively sold
[1:20]more than, wait for it, 40 million copies in 48 languages worldwide.
[1:26]He has written eight number one New York Times bestsellers, including Tuesdays with
[1:29]Maury, the best-selling memoir of all time, which topped the list for four straight
[1:34]years and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2022.
[1:38]He has also written award-winning TV films, stage plays, screenplays, a nationally syndicated
[1:43]newspaper column, and a musical.
[1:45]He appeared for more than 20 years on ESPN and was a fixture on the sports reporters
[1:50]through his work at the Detroit Free Press.
[1:53]He was inducted into both the National Sports Media Association and Michigan Sports Hall
[1:58]Hall's a fame, and was the recipient of the Red Smith Award for Lifetime Achievement,
[2:02]following his best-selling memoir Finding Chica and Human Touch, a weekly serial written
[2:07]and published online, which raised nearly $1 million for pandemic relief.
[2:11]He returned a fiction with the stranger in the lifeboat, which debuted at number one
[2:15]on The New York Times bestsellers' list after being number one on Amazon.
[2:18]His much anticipated new novel set during the Holocaust came out in the fall.
[2:22]Welcome, Mitch.
[2:23]Thank you so much for coming back on the majority of his time and so on.
[2:26]So here to discuss 2000s, he has uploaded a nine-tier, which by the way, is he's my number
[2:31]book book pic.
[2:32]Say him to say essay-wide, Detroit, and Brella.
[2:34]Just an opinion of it for cynical clinic.
[2:36]Thank you for coming on.
[2:37]So to see you again, thank you for this election.
[2:40]Thanks for your rest.
[2:41]Programs for Detroit's most registered citizens.
[2:43]Please tell us in areas of 2010, because they're operated after a few months ago.
[2:46]Well, it's about a little boy to 60 children, which he raised their work to, who's
[2:51]never told a lie in his life.
[2:53]And the Nazis come and invade his city, that's a lot of degrees.
[2:58]And they find out that they've got this little honest kid who's never told a lie in his
[3:02]life.
[3:03]And they basically kidnap him and trick him into standing on the train platform and
[3:08]telling all the Jews who have been rounded up there that they're going to a safe place that
[3:13]there's going to be jobs and it's going to be good.
[3:15]Their families are going to be together.
[3:17]And he believes this is true because he has no reason to suspect otherwise.
[3:20]And they say, if you do this, then your family will be returned to you and everything
[3:23]will be fine.
[3:24]And he does this for train after train until the last train out when he sees the Nazis putting
[3:29]his own family on the train and he runs to join them and he's grabbed by the Nazi and
[3:35]he finds out that they're actually being sent to their death.
[3:38]And they get sent away and he is forced to stay behind.
[3:42]And from that moment on, this little boy who never told a lie in his life can't speak to
[3:46]truth anymore.
[3:47]He loses the ability to say anything true with like chokes in his throat.
[3:52]And it follows him from that point forward through the war, all the decades that follow
[3:58]and all the consequences that happen to him as a result of this trick and how he, you
[4:03]know, what happens when we lose the truth in our lives, which is kind of the biggest
[4:07]theme of the book.
[4:09]And you follow his family and what happens to them, these sort of dual timelines, well,
[4:13]the same timeline, but dual narratives of where life separates and how it's one small
[4:19]thing, you know, where he was at the time versus where he was, you know, that he was hiding
[4:24]in this cabinet when the Nazis came in and took the family to, you know, the essentially
[4:30]the ghetto until they were deported and he wasn't there and what if he had been, what
[4:34]if he hadn't been in that cabinet at that time and how life, especially then, I mean,
[4:39]not especially.
[4:40]How then that it was a life or death timing all the time.
[4:44]Yeah, you know, he's the central character.
[4:47]There's four characters in the book that the book follows literally from 1936 all the
[4:53]way to the, to, you know, the mid 80s and it's how they intertwine with one another.
[4:58]So there's him, his name is Nico, there's his older brother, whose name is Sebastian,
[5:03]who's nowhere near as honest as him, but ends up getting sent to the concentration camps
[5:08]and blames his brother for lying to them.
[5:11]There's a girl named Fannie, who's in love with both of them and she has put on the train
[5:16]as well, but has thrown out the window in an attempt to escape and actually spend her
[5:21]time during the war or running away and trying to find her way back to Nico, Nico's trying
[5:26]to find his way back to his family and then the fourth character is the Nazi officer who
[5:32]engineered all this and how they continue to intertwine with one another during the
[5:38]war after the war and the years after how they try to piece their lives together and
[5:43]they all end up sort of coming back together in this big climax scene at the end, which
[5:48]outside of the climax scene at the end is very true about what happened to people during
[5:53]that stretch of time.
[5:54]You know, there was no such thing as forgetting what happened during that war and no such
[5:59]thing for Jewish victims to as forgetting what they went through.
[6:05]And each one of these characters has to deal with it differently, Nico just blanks
[6:09]it out and basically just lies his way through the rest of his life, Sebastian becomes
[6:14]a Nazi hunter and dedicates himself to finding these people including his brother who
[6:19]he thinks is one of them and Fannie moves between the two of them, you know, trying to
[6:24]understand what happened to her and what happened to them and, you know, the overall theme
[6:28]of it is that truth is an essential part of our lives and honesty was one another as essential
[6:34]part of our lives.
[6:35]When we lose that and we start lying to one another, whether individuals or countries, we
[6:41]pay a huge price and I had no idea it was going to be as relevant today when I started
[6:46]it as it's turned out to be.
[6:48]I thought it might be relevant because of the politics of the world, you know, where
[6:53]everybody is sort of choosing their own truth now.
[6:56]It's become even more relevant accidentally with the timing of the release of the book.
[7:03]Well, it's hard to take the polycost and everything, all the atrocities and the camps
[7:09]and everything.
[7:10]I've watched endless as a Jewish woman and just as a citizen of the world who is deeply
[7:15]empathetic, I've read many books and watched many movies and just have immersed myself
[7:21]in this as part of the never forget but also just out of human interest and compassion
[7:27]and all of that and there's the question, like, well, how can anyone write this?
[7:33]What is the new take on it?
[7:34]How can someone, what is the new, like, how can this book do something new?
[7:38]So tell me how you decided to tackle this and the way you came into it and all of that.
[7:43]It's a really good question and as a writer, I went through the very same machinations
[7:49]that you just kind of expressed.
[7:52]I knew that one point in my life, I wanted to set a story during World War II with the
[7:57]Holocaust as a backdrop.
[7:59]On the other hand, I didn't want to write another Holocaust book, not that the ones that
[8:04]have come before me are great, they are, but I didn't want to just write something that
[8:09]was the fill in the blank of Auschwitz because somebody has done that really well prior
[8:15]to me and I also didn't want to just tell the story that was set the whole time during
[8:21]the concentration camps and followed that familiar pattern of ghetto concentration camp,
[8:28]liberation and, you know, first of all, there was no end with liberation of the Holocaust.
[8:34]That was the beginning for the people who survived, then it was the rest of their lives.
[8:39]So I said, you know, I waited years, honestly, to write this to me.
[8:43]I didn't, because I couldn't find a story that I thought was original enough.
[8:48]And then when I happened to go to, it was in Yad Vashem in Israel on a book tour trip that
[8:53]I was there and I went to the museum and saw some of the testimonies of different people
[8:58]there.
[8:59]And one of them was saying how they used Jewish people to lie to their own people about
[9:05]getting on these trains because after all, if a Nazi guard is standing there and he goes,
[9:08]you get on the train and you think you're going to your death, you might as well die
[9:12]on the platform, you know, you might as well fight and why did so many people not fight?
[9:17]Well, they were tricked.
[9:18]They were lied to and to use your own people to lie to you.
[9:22]I thought, well, now that's something that I haven't really seen.
[9:25]So that was the germ of the idea.
[9:27]And then I had lived in Greece way back when and an earlier part of my life when I was
[9:33]a musician and I had, I was a nightclub singer and a piano player on the street, was a
[9:41]whole different time.
[9:42]I know it's probably hard to imagine right here, but I had a whole different existence.
[9:47]One day I'm going to write that book.
[9:49]And so I always knew about Greece, maybe more than the average, you know, American guy
[9:53]was not Greek.
[9:55]And a lot of people don't realize that Greece number one was decimated by the Nazi.
[10:00]He's the same way as other countries in Europe or,
[10:02]but two, the most Jewish city in all of Europe
[10:07]was actually Thessalonica.
[10:09]That was the only city in all of Europe
[10:11]that had a Jewish majority population.
[10:13]They were the majority.
[10:15]And you can you imagine a city that had a majority,
[10:18]Jewish population having itself wiped out.
[10:20]I mean, there were 55, something thousand Jews there
[10:24]and there were 1,500 left when the Nazis were done with them.
[10:27]And so I said, all right, let me set a book in Greece.
[10:30]Very few Holocaust books are set there.
[10:34]Let me focus on the idea of truth and lies
[10:38]and how sadly it was gerbils who said this very famous quote
[10:41]or at least is attributed to a lie told once is easily seen
[10:45]as a lie, but a lie told a thousand times
[10:47]becomes the truth.
[10:48]And that's exactly what the Nazis did
[10:52]by repeating the same lie over and over about it.
[10:54]It was fault the Germany was and whatever
[10:56]and how they were.
[10:57]They were just purifying the country
[10:59]and this was all for the good of the state
[11:01]and all that.
[11:02]I mean, while it was just mass murder.
[11:03]And that's kind of, we live in a world like that now
[11:08]where people justify their actions with their own truths.
[11:11]And they just sort of say, well, this is the truth
[11:13]and accept it and people say, yeah, all right,
[11:15]that's my truth.
[11:16]That's my cable TV news station.
[11:18]That's my an analyst and that's how I'm gonna look
[11:21]at the world.
[11:22]And the idea of there being a pure truth
[11:25]has disappeared in place of, I'm gonna pick my truth
[11:28]and I'm just gonna follow that.
[11:29]And that's a very dangerous pattern.
[11:31]And so I wanted to show how was the precursor
[11:34]of that already happened.
[11:36]We already saw what the world can be like
[11:38]when people start to believe something
[11:40]that is not only not true, but is evenly not true.
[11:44]And so I thought, okay, there's a story
[11:47]that at least I have a red before I can start to write
[11:50]and that's how I approached it.
[11:53]Well, the end result is it is original and it does,
[11:56]it's told in a way also with all the different characters
[11:59]and the intertwining lives and the thought
[12:03]for booking nature of what you were saying
[12:05]in the aftermath, what happens?
[12:07]What are the long-term effects?
[12:08]I mean, there are also all these studies
[12:10]on children of survivors and the ripple effects
[12:13]of generational trauma, which is now in the news all the time.
[12:15]And that's, this like tiptoes towards that
[12:19]not, you know, in fall, but what are the lasting effects?
[12:22]And to your point of hatred, I mean, it's terrifying.
[12:27]So to think that it couldn't happen again
[12:30]and things happening today, it's just,
[12:32]it's all very, very terrifying.
[12:34]And I feel like the scenes in your book
[12:36]are just incredibly sort of prophetic.
[12:39]And just, I don't know, it's very, very important,
[12:43]especially now to read this book, I feel.
[12:45]Well, I know as I'm listening to,
[12:47]first of all, I appreciate the kind words,
[12:48]that I'm also getting a little scared
[12:50]that I don't want my readers who are used to reading my books
[12:53]to feel like, my god, he's written a terrifying book.
[12:56]And no, I'm terrified.
[12:58]No, I'm sorry.
[13:00]Well, you know, but it's something that I think about,
[13:02]not because you said it, but you know,
[13:04]sometimes when people hear the word,
[13:05]how it costs it would ever,
[13:06]oh, that's too hard to read or I don't want to read it.
[13:09]You know, I tried to make, first of all,
[13:10]there's a very, very sweet isn't the right word,
[13:13]but I think engaging love story between Fannie
[13:17]and, you know, first, the older brother and then Nico,
[13:20]she spends her whole life basically trying to find him again
[13:23]because he saved her life during the war.
[13:26]And the redemption that you get from love,
[13:30]which is the flip side of what you were talking about,
[13:34]well, how do you survive something,
[13:35]the worst thing that you can possibly think of.
[13:37]And if someone can think of something worse
[13:39]than what happened during the Holocaust,
[13:41]send it to me in a letter,
[13:42]because I'll write a book about it,
[13:43]because I can't imagine it, you know, it's horrific.
[13:46]And yet, people did live, you know,
[13:48]and Victor Frankl's book and all that proves,
[13:51]you know, that there's light beyond that,
[13:53]but what kind of life and how do you get back from that?
[13:58]And the second half of the book is all about that, you know,
[14:01]what you do with this tragedy or the result of these lies.
[14:05]And hopefully, if you agree with me, you read it,
[14:07]you know, in the end, it has a redemptive, positive message
[14:12]about it.
[14:13]It's not just terrific or terrible or terrifying scenes
[14:16]or things like that.
[14:17]I think you need those kinds of scenes here and there
[14:20]to set off, you know, the love that comes later
[14:23]and how beautiful that is, you know,
[14:25]that someone could survive that
[14:26]and still have the capacity to love
[14:28]or the capacity to be kind.
[14:30]And Nico becomes this almost great Gatsby kind of figure,
[14:35]you know, like he survives the war by lying.
[14:38]He actually finds his way back to a concentration camp.
[14:42]His family was sent to one, he was spared.
[14:44]And then he spends the whole war lying his way
[14:47]into a concentration camp trying to find his family
[14:50]with tragic results.
[14:51]And then he ends up in America
[14:54]and where does a liar go in America?
[14:56]Hollywood, you know, because it's perfect.
[14:59]And he ends up becoming this very, very successful
[15:02]but reclusive movie maker, you know,
[15:05]like the head of a studio,
[15:06]but nobody ever spends time with him
[15:08]or knows him whatever he keeps changing his name
[15:11]and he's very mysterious.
[15:13]And you don't know what he's really doing with his time.
[15:15]It just seems like it's like, well,
[15:17]that, you know, all he does is make up lies.
[15:20]And he can't even, he can't even answer if they say,
[15:22]like, you know, what you have for lunch today.
[15:24]And he, if he had soup, he'll say pizza,
[15:27]just because he can't tell the truth.
[15:29]And yet all this time, there's something going on.
[15:31]I don't wanna ruin the book for anybody.
[15:33]But there's something going on with him
[15:34]that, you know, is redemptive.
[15:36]And when he gets to see Pandy again,
[15:38]this is beautiful love story that they, you know,
[15:40]they pretend they don't know each other
[15:42]because neither one wants to bring up, you know,
[15:45]the terrible things that have happened.
[15:46]And I thought that that was also interesting too
[15:48]to do a love story where neither party acknowledges
[15:52]that they know each other.
[15:53]And yet they fall in love with each other.
[15:55]I'm not seeing that before.
[15:57]So, you know, there's many things
[15:59]besides the, you know, the awful things
[16:03]that people went through during that time.
[16:05]Yes.
[16:06]And I did not mean to overly emphasize
[16:08]those were just pieces of it.
[16:10]It was a beautiful love story.
[16:12]I mean, essentially it's about people, right?
[16:14]It's about people's lives.
[16:15]And even if you go through something,
[16:17]there's the rest, you know,
[16:18]so no, I did not mean to overemphasize.
[16:20]No, we have movie stars and really close friendships
[16:24]and, you know, Fannie, not to give things away,
[16:27]but the relationship of the woman with Fannie
[16:30]and how that stayed over time as well
[16:33]and just the good nature of people,
[16:36]the desire to help and all of that.
[16:38]It shines through completely.
[16:40]So, no, it is not just about that.
[16:42]It's about life and it's about what's important to us
[16:46]and what it means to be sort of a good person
[16:48]in the end and how that can manifest itself
[16:52]in so many different ways.
[16:53]What does it mean to sort of be good?
[16:55]How do you give back and all of that?
[16:57]I feel like there are a lot bigger questions.
[16:59]Yeah, it's also narrated by a truth,
[17:03]which is something I tried once before
[17:06]in one of my books and a number of books
[17:08]that go I wrote a book called
[17:09]The Magic Springs of Frankie Presto
[17:11]and I had the music was the narrator
[17:14]because it was a book all about a guitar player.
[17:16]And I really liked that voice.
[17:19]It gave you like a perspective that was different
[17:21]from either the third person or the first person.
[17:24]And so in this case, truth is the narrator of the book.
[17:28]And so truth is constantly sort of talking to the audience
[17:32]and saying, why do you abuse me the way that you do?
[17:35]And I was when the angels all gathered together
[17:38]and God was trying to decide whether or not to create man.
[17:43]Righteousness said, yes, create man, man will be righteous
[17:46]and other attributes said, yes, create man,
[17:49]absolutely great man.
[17:50]And only I said, don't create man
[17:52]because he'll become a liar and he'll destroy me.
[17:55]And what did God do?
[17:56]God threw me out of heaven and cast me down to earth,
[18:00]which is an old parable that, you know,
[18:02]I didn't invent it exist in various forms.
[18:06]But I always thought that that was interesting
[18:07]that truth would be the one virtue
[18:10]that would say, man can't handle me.
[18:12]And so don't bother.
[18:14]And so it narrates the story from that.
[18:17]It's really, I found that voice
[18:19]to be a really interesting character to write in
[18:21]because truth obviously knows everything
[18:23]that really went on inside the heads and hearts
[18:26]of all the characters.
[18:28]And so it has a unique perspective to tell the story.
[18:31]Very true.
[18:32]It was really powerful.
[18:34]How did you go about writing this?
[18:36]Did you know truth was gonna be the narrator?
[18:38]And you do it, you do it from the start, yeah.
[18:41]That was from the start, I knew there's lines early
[18:44]in the book, you know, you can trust the story
[18:46]you're about to hear, you can trust it
[18:48]because I'm the only thing you can trust.
[18:51]And I knew I wanted to include that line.
[18:53]And you know, there's sort of like when you write a book,
[18:55]there's sort of for me.
[18:57]I hear everybody does it differently.
[18:58]But there's sort of like anchor sentences
[19:01]that you know you wanna say.
[19:03]And you kind of stick them in the ground,
[19:07]and one goes here, one goes there,
[19:08]and then you kind of write in between them
[19:10]and find your way to them.
[19:12]And that was one of them and the fact that, you know,
[19:17]a man to be forgiven will do anything.
[19:20]You know, there was, when I went to Solanica
[19:22]to research this book, there's this big structure there
[19:26]called The White Tower.
[19:28]And you can't miss it, it's spectacular,
[19:30]it was big round kind of fortress, Byzantine fortress.
[19:34]And I asked my guide, you know, what's the story about that?
[19:37]And she told me this amazing story that for years,
[19:40]it was built in the 15th century,
[19:41]something that for hundreds of years it was a prison.
[19:44]And they used to call it the Red Tower
[19:46]because there was so much blood shed inside
[19:48]and outside used to hang people from the outside of it
[19:50]and you know, people died there.
[19:53]And then sometimes during the 1800s, whatever,
[19:56]it was so filthy on the outside that they wanted to paint it
[19:59]but they couldn't find it.
[20:00]anybody who wanted to do such a difficult task.
[20:02]And there was a prisoner inside the prison
[20:05]who volunteered to paint it by himself,
[20:07]the paint it white, on the condition that if he completed the task,
[20:12]they would forgive him and let him go.
[20:14]And they agreed and he spent however one year
[20:17]and whatever by himself painting this tower white
[20:20]and was finally let go.
[20:22]And this becomes a story in the book that repeats over and over
[20:26]that a man to be forgiven will do anything.
[20:29]And that becomes a theme for Nico who deep down
[20:35]is can't forgive himself for telling these lies
[20:38]even though they weren't his fault.
[20:39]And what he'll do to be forgiven.
[20:41]And I think that that's a theme that we have in our lives as well.
[20:45]What will we do to make up for a sin that we realize we committed?
[20:51]How far will we go?
[20:53]Some people spend their whole lives in retribution for something
[20:58]that they felt that they did when they were younger.
[21:01]Some people who feel like they were bad parents,
[21:04]spend their whole lives being trying to get great grandparents
[21:07]so that they can make up for it.
[21:09]There's all kinds of ways that we sort of do that.
[21:12]And I just thought that that story in Greece,
[21:15]which was such a great setting, a guy who you can just see
[21:19]that guy in the tower every day trying to paint over,
[21:22]thinking if I just convinced this, I'll be free.
[21:25]and it plays a big part in the story.
[21:28]I didn't realize that was true.
[21:29]Yeah, it's true.
[21:30]We've been more powerful to know that.
[21:32]Are there things in your life
[21:34]for which you're seeking forgiveness?
[21:36]Yeah, many, many.
[21:39]And also, you know, you've been making up
[21:42]for missed opportunities.
[21:44]You know, when I was, when my wife and I got married,
[21:49]we weren't able to have children.
[21:51]And, you know, sort of accepted that that was,
[21:53]well, that's the way it's going to be.
[21:54]But I always also felt a little bad
[21:57]that maybe I kind of dragged my feet
[21:59]when we got married and, you know,
[22:02]maybe if we got married sooner
[22:04]or something would have been what happened differently.
[22:07]And then in our, my 50s, I ended up taking over an orphanage
[22:12]in Hayden, quite by accident as a whole of the story.
[22:15]And all of a sudden, I have all these children in my life.
[22:19]Now I have 65 at a time, you know,
[22:22]we have three write-ups there's here now living with us.
[22:25]Got 13 out in the state here in college
[22:28]and another 60 down in Hayden,
[22:30]that I go visit every month.
[22:32]And I have so many kids in my life.
[22:34]And sometimes I wonder if I'm not doing that
[22:37]because it's a bit of a makeup for, you know,
[22:41]an earlier part of my life or something
[22:42]I thought that I did wrong.
[22:44]You know, I hadn't thought about that until you asked me.
[22:46]But yeah, I think everybody has something
[22:48]that they're trying to atone for in some way, you know,
[22:53]even if it really wasn't a sin.
[22:55]And, you know, Nico certainly does that.
[22:57]And in fact, all three of the characters do, you know,
[23:00]the only one who does it is the Nazi
[23:02]who continues to be the Nazi all through his life.
[23:05]He just wants to, you know, but even in his way,
[23:07]he's trying to, you know, get back to what he believes is,
[23:10]you know, he wants a second write to appear and, you know,
[23:14]and bring this all back.
[23:16]It also explores the idea, which I, you know,
[23:19]a lot of people didn't realize until Al Pacino
[23:22]and that gang made that show the Nazi hunters
[23:25]that, you know, Americans did harbor Nazis
[23:28]and brought them over after the war
[23:30]because they wanted to fight the Russians
[23:32]and kept them here with phony names and phony, you know,
[23:36]and never made them pay for their crimes
[23:38]because they used them, you know, scientists
[23:40]to try to spy in the Nazis and he's one of them.
[23:43]And so a continued lie, you know, goes on and on,
[23:47]even even for him.
[23:48]And was hoping that part was not true, you know.
[23:51]In fact, almost everything in the book is true,
[23:54]except the characters and the way they played out.
[23:57]You know, I don't know if I, I don't know what qualifies
[23:59]you as historical fiction.
[24:00]It seems like a very lofty worker to me
[24:03]and I don't think of myself as that kind of a writer,
[24:06]but I realize like both in Frankie Cresto
[24:09]and in the Little Liar, you know,
[24:11]I spent an inordinate amount of time on research
[24:14]making sure that all the backdrop stories were accurate
[24:18]and, you know, from the dates that things happened
[24:22]to even the little small anecdotes
[24:24]like about the white tower or things like that.
[24:26]It was, it's all true.
[24:28]And so I don't know if that plot may make sense
[24:30]of historical fiction or not,
[24:31]but there's a lot of history actually in the book.
[24:33]And I think when you're writing about times like that,
[24:38]the truth is more interesting
[24:40]than something that I could think of, you know,
[24:42]it just rings, it's like a real bell versus a plastic bell,
[24:47]you know, a real bell just has a certain sound
[24:49]and you can ring a plastic bell
[24:50]or hit a synthesizer note that's supposed to sound like a bell,
[24:53]but there's something about the real ring of a bell
[24:57]that sounds different and there's something about,
[24:59]you know, using real events
[25:01]but mixing them into your fictional characters
[25:04]that ring was more true.
[25:07]And it's interesting and you say,
[25:08]I didn't realize that that was true,
[25:09]but it felt true in the book, right?
[25:11]Yeah.
[25:12]Yeah, so well, it actually was, that's well.
[25:16]I mean, I didn't doubt, I don't know, I don't know.
[25:19]I just didn't even think,
[25:21]I thought it was just such a great story
[25:23]that it couldn't be true, like, oh, that's the perfect,
[25:26]you know, yeah, that's the perfect,
[25:30]that shows us so much, it ties in so well,
[25:32]it couldn't be actually what happened, so that's funny.
[25:36]Wow, well, did you ever get sort of emotional
[25:39]and teary-eyed riding your way through these scenes?
[25:42]I mean, like, and I don't mean to harbor on,
[25:44]even the wonderful scenes,
[25:46]even the ones that just move you sort of emotionally
[25:49]because I felt very moved.
[25:51]Yeah, I did, first of all, you know, I'm a brother
[25:55]and I have, you know, a kid brother
[25:58]and we've had our share of, you know,
[26:01]some things that we've had to endure together
[26:03]and a brother relationship was very emotional for me to write,
[26:08]you know, because she had an older brother
[26:09]who really didn't forgive the younger brother,
[26:12]but his whole anger towards him,
[26:14]all his life was falsely based.
[26:16]He didn't realize he thought his brother was lying
[26:18]because he was cooperating with the Nazis
[26:21]and his younger brother, Nico, didn't know that he was being tricked
[26:26]and this hatred that boils between these brothers
[26:29]for decades is all based on the same lie
[26:33]that the Nazis perpetrated.
[26:36]And so that was painful to write
[26:37]because of brother relationship, you know,
[26:39]I have a brother who I adore and, you know,
[26:42]the way that they ultimately finally come together
[26:45]at the end was a very, very emotional scene for me
[26:48]and writing that love story between, you know,
[26:51]a woman who was reminded me of the character
[26:55]that Diane Keaton played in Reds, you know,
[26:57]when John Reed and she's in love with John Reed,
[27:00]she crosses Siberia to find him in a prison cell.
[27:05]Well, Fannie in my book sort of does the same thing
[27:08]and she literally comes from a little village in Austria
[27:10]and travels across the world to try just on the belief
[27:14]that Nico is alive somewhere and that he saved her life
[27:18]on the banks of the Daniel River
[27:19]and hungry when they were shooting Jews in the head
[27:23]and having them fall in the river
[27:25]and so she remembered seeing him and then she fainted
[27:28]and she never didn't know what happened to him.
[27:31]And she uses that small little sliver of a memory
[27:34]and she's somewhere inside of her,
[27:35]she's sure that he saved her and spends years searching
[27:39]for him only to be proven correct.
[27:41]And so, you know, that stuff,
[27:43]when she finally sees him and they meet each other
[27:45]and they don't acknowledge each other, you know,
[27:49]and she says to him, I don't have too much away
[27:51]but there's a moment where she says,
[27:52]don't you wanna know my name that is it's not necessary?
[27:56]And, you know, that like I get chills
[27:58]when I'm even talking about it
[27:59]because, you know, you create these characters
[28:00]and, you know, they're deeply in love with each other
[28:04]but they can't express it.
[28:05]And of course, the ending, which I don't wanna go into
[28:07]was very, very emotional to write.
[28:09]And so, yeah, I know it kind of finds
[28:11]that be that if you're not crying a little bit,
[28:15]you know, if you're not doing a good enough job,
[28:18]if I can just be so dispassioned and just write it,
[28:21]but I expect all the readers to be moved.
[28:24]I'm not moved, but I expect you to be moved.
[28:26]That's not gonna work.
[28:27]If you're not moved yourself,
[28:29]you don't feel a little chill or a little tear
[28:31]or something when you're writing it,
[28:33]then it's probably not very good.
[28:35]That's very good advice, very good advice.
[28:39]Mitch, thank you so much.
[28:40]Thank you for sharing.
[28:41]Thank you for the story, the journey for giving hope
[28:45]in a dark time, honestly.
[28:47]And yeah, thank you for chatting about it with me.
[28:50]Well, thank you for spending time with me
[28:52]and making it your selection.
[28:53]I hope everybody enjoys it.
[28:54]It's always great to see you.
[28:55]I hope we get a chance to talk again.
[28:57]You too, okay.
[28:58]Thank you.
[28:59]Bye-bye.
[29:00]Bye-bye.
[29:01]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[29:04]to Read Books.
[29:05]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[29:07]at Zebioans and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[29:14]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:17]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[29:18]like Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[29:20]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[29:22]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.