The parade began and the children were hoisted up on the adults’ shoulders. Mr. Beck took Willa, and Oliver scooped Dorothy up.
Tom put his arm around Margaret and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Mmmm,” he said. “You smell good.”
“I used the last few drops of the Fragonard perfume. Even though I’ve only used it on special occasions.”
“You know what that means, of course.”
She turned to him, struck as she always was, by how much she loved her husband.
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to need to take you to Paris.”
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About the Author
Camille Di Maio left an award-winning real estate career to become a bestselling author. She has a bucket list that is never ending and uses her adventures to inspire her writing. She’s lived in Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and California, and has spent enough time in Hawai‘i and Maine to feel like a local. She’s traveled to four continents (so far), and hopes to get to all of them someday. Camille studied political science in college. She loves to spend Saturdays at farmers’ markets and belts out Broadway tunes whenever the moment strikes. She lives with her husband of twenty-four years in coastal Virginia, has two kiddos grown and flown and two still at home. Rescue pets have been a long-term passion for her, the most recent addition being a German shepherd puppy.
Reading Group Guide
Author Essay
February 2020 found me in a place that profoundly changed the world eight decades ago—Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Almost to the day that I docked in that beautiful city, the world learned a new word that would once again change everything—coronavirus.
Where one aggressor was massive—with its kamikazes and bombs and spectacle—the other was microscopic.
I stood on the deck of the USS Missouri and surveyed my surroundings. I am not one to cry easily, but the gravity of where I was provoked a profound sense of awe and gratitude. And the tears followed.
Before me, encased in glass, lay the documents that signaled the end of World War II.
Little did I know that humanity was once again about to embark on a global battle of an entirely different nature.
I wrote this book about WWII during a worldwide lockdown. And though I had explored some of its themes in previous books I’d written, never did I feel as connected to the characters’ experiences as I did this time. Food rationing (or toilet paper, as the case was), uncertainty, loss, worry. We learned new skills. Businesses pivoted and updated. We all discovered how to Zoom. I deepened friendships with neighbors by having “Sidewalk Happy Hours” six feet apart—when previously, we’d all been too busy to get a common date on the calendar. I started a new hobby of canning fruit. (My peach preserves were delicious. My watermelon jelly, not so much.)
But I didn’t have a notion, on that February day, that these things were about to happen. That life as we knew it was going to change. I breathed in the Honolulu air and listened to the lapping ocean waves and imagined a time when the people of that city were similarly unaware of what was just around the corner.
They say history repeats itself. Which comes in handy for a historical fiction writer.
Until We Meet takes place on the other side of the country: Brooklyn, New York. It is two years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the United States is in the middle of the war. Three women work at the Brooklyn Navy Yard building that very same Missouri that I stood on. Not knowing the significance that ship would bear just two years later. Margaret, Dottie, and Gladys are just like you and me. They have hopes and dreams, they want love and employment and happiness. They do charitable things while laughing together. They worry about their families.
Though romance is a thread throughout my books, it was the friendship of women that intrigued me most as this story developed.
Of the three, I think I am most like Margaret. Drawn equally to tradition and progress. Content and yet the carrier of dreams. However, I had great fun writing Gladys—all sass and fire, two words that do not describe me. Or at least the me that most often comes out—perhaps writing her revealed my inner rebel more than I realized.
Similar to inhabiting the life of a character in one of the many high school musicals I once performed in, writing gives me the chance to step into another’s shoes and play.
I was also excited to incorporate letter writing into the story as that medium has had a profound impact on my life. At one time as a teenager, I had twenty-two pen pals worldwide. This was long before the internet or E-anything were a part of our vernacular. Long before words on a screen became poor substitutes for those in ink. It was through those letters that I discovered places beyond my own borders and made friendships that helped me through those rough young years.
Though none of them were of a romantic nature, I do believe that true and deep friendships can develop through such a format. And I believe love, too, can emerge.
Pen and paper provide an anonymity that, ironically, best allow us to reveal our truest selves.
Even now, I write close to fifty letters a year.
As much as I enjoyed writing about the characters, one of the most fascinating things to me about writing historical fiction is learning something about which I know little and correcting assumptions I’d previously made.
For example, I was excited to learn that the commissioning of the USS Missouri took place in June 1944, which fit very well with the storyline. Then—the horror!—I realized through research that a launch (which comes with a lot of pomp and circumstance) and a commissioning are two separate events, often months apart.
The launching of the battleship, during which the champagne was broken and the speech was given by Senator Harry Truman, happened in January 1944. Then—as apparently it goes with shipbuilding in general—it was sent into the open waters where months of test drives and interior work took place. A commissioning happens when the ship is ready to go into service. Sometimes, this includes a new round of pomp and circumstance. Sometimes it doesn’t.
The commissioning of the USS Missouri happened on June 11, 1944.
Shipbuilding novice that I am, I didn’t initially realize that they were two separate events. And my husband—a U.S. Marine—didn’t know that either. So I didn’t feel too bad.
For the purpose of storytelling, I needed the celebratory event to take place in June because the excitement would then be tempered with the discovery of all that happened days before on D-Day. So, as historical fiction writers have the license to do, I combined the launching with the commissioning. And with the assumption that many readers would—like me—not know the difference, I wanted to clear up this necessary inaccuracy in an author’s note for the purpose of education.
So now if that’s ever a Jeopardy! question, you’ll know the difference. (That’s my answer for every otherwise useless fact that I learn.)
An additional timeline I stretched was that of the wedding reception at the Algonquin Hotel. The Algonquin is a small boutique hotel in the heart of New York City. I have stayed there several times, but any trip to New York finds me having at least one overpriced, cinnamon-sprinkled cappuccino there just to soak in the literary ambience. It was renovated to what you see today in 1946, and George and Dottie’s wedding happens in 1944. However, I wanted to weave a scene of this beloved and historic place into the book and hopefully inspire readers to visit it when they’re in the city. To do so, I fudged the years by a hair. However, the story about the history of the cats is true and to this day, you will find a resident cat at the Algonquin. As of this printing, it is currently a Hamlet.