The pretty spa town of Altaussee was a bolt-hole for any number of high-ranking Nazi officials in the war’s immediate aftermath, including Adolf Eichmann. His wife continued to live at 8 Fischerndorf with their sons—in 1952, a few years after her fictional interview with Ian and his team in this book, the real Vera Eichmann quietly packed up her children and joined her husband in exile. Had anyone been keeping watch on her, Eichmann would likely have been caught years before his eventual capture in 1960.
As always, I have taken some liberties with the historical record to serve the story. I wasn’t able to confirm if there was an air club at Irkutsk, though there were hundreds across the USSR by the time Nina learned to fly. It isn’t known if representatives from the female aviation regiments were present at Marina Raskova’s funeral in Red Square, or if Stalin himself was there—but given the deep affection in which both the “Boss” and the women pilots held Raskova, it seems likely. (Besides, I couldn’t resist the opportunity of showing Stalin, along with his very real habit of doodling wolves on documents!) The occasion where the Night Witches had to scramble their planes into the sky when they had just sat down to breakfast happened in the Crimea rather than in Poland and is combined with a separate occasion recounted by Lieutenant Polina Gelman, who recalls getting extremely tipsy after an unaccustomed drink at a holiday dinner, then flying a bombing run while completely hammered.
Ian Graham is fictional, and so is his presence as a war correspondent at historic events such as Omaha Beach and the Nuremberg executions. He is based on several journalists like Ernie Pyle, Richard Dimbleby, and war photographer Robert Capa who spent the war jumping between the front line’s hottest danger zones in search of the news. Such men might not have been soldiers, but they risked their lives parachute-jumping from bombers, running with guerrilla troops, and wading onto the beaches of Normandy armed with nothing but notepads and cameras. Their bravery was astounding, and after the war many suffered as badly from PTSD as any soldier. Among the male war correspondents and photographers were some truly heroic women as well, including Jordan McBride’s heroes Margaret Bourke-White (star photographer of LIFE magazine), and Gerda Taro (the first female photographer to cover a war zone). Jordan is fictional, but her heroines are not, and deserve to be remembered.
The SS Conte Biancamano which brings Ian and his team to the United States was a real passenger liner running the Genoa-Naples-Cannes-New York route, but exact sailing dates have been adjusted for the story. Eve Gardiner, Ian’s acquaintance from British Intelligence with whom he shares a drink on that voyage, might be recognizable to some who have read my novel The Alice Network. Ruby Sutton and her newspaper column, quoted by Eve during the Blitz, comes from Jennifer Robson’s Goodnight from London, with permission of the author who was on tour with me at the time of writing.
Finally, a word about lakes and lake spirits. There is no Selkie Lake in Massachusetts, but Altaussee, Lake Rusalka, and Lake Baikal are all very real. This story began for me with the idea of lakes, the water nymphs rumored to inhabit them (some benevolent and some malevolent, depending on the folklore), and the three very different women who begin this story standing on vastly distant shores. It would take the tides of war plus one determined Englishman and his Jewish partner to find the connections between these women, and it leads them on perhaps a more pulse-pounding adventure than real Nazi hunters usually faced. But that’s how the muse gave me the story, and I rarely argue with the muse. (Because I always lose!)
I owe heartfelt thanks to many people who helped in the writing and researching of this book. My mother and my husband, always my first readers and cheerleaders. My wonderful critique partners Stephanie Dray, Annalori Ferrell, Sophie Perinot, Aimie Runyan, and Stephanie Thornton, whose insightful red pens saved this book from being utter rubbish. My agent, Kevan Lyon, and editor, Tessa Woodward—thank you for giving me that extra month to finish; you have the patience of saints. Brian Swift for his expert advice on firearms malfunctions, and Aaron Orkin for his expert advice on the kinds of wounds that result from firearms malfunctions—here’s hoping we didn’t all end up on FBI watch lists for those long email chains. Jennifer Robson for answering questions on the ins and outs of journalism, and her father, Stuart Robson, for his patience untangling complicated questions about World War II army rank and POW structure. Anne Hooper for her insights on children learning the violin, and Julie Alexander, Shelby Miksch, and Svetlana Libenson for their lessons in Russian slang (especially the swearing!). Huge thanks to Danielle Gibeault, and to Janene and Brian “Biggles” Shepherd of Fun Flights in San Diego for fact-checking all my aviation details and answering countless questions about flying. And finally, thank you to Olive—not just a fictional aircraft, but a very real WWII-era Travel Air 4000 who took me for a ride through the clouds above San Diego, with Biggles at the stick. Olive showed this ground-bound author exactly how thrilling flight can be!
Reading Group Questions
All the characters begin the book standing on different lake shores—Nina at Lake Baikal, Anneliese at Altaussee, Jordan at Selkie Lake, and Ian at the lake in Cologne. Nina and the Huntress clash for the first time at Lake Rusalka in Poland, and everyone comes together ultimately at the lake in Massachusetts. Discuss how the idea of the lake, and the rusalka lake spirit, weaves through The Huntress as a theme.
Ian states that the life of a Nazi hunter is about patience, boredom, and fact-checking, not high-speed glamour and action. Do you agree with him? What preconceptions did you have about Nazi hunters?
Jordan’s drive to become a photographer clashes with the expectations of her father—and almost everyone else she knows—that she will marry her high school boyfriend, work in the family business, and relegate picture-snapping to a hobby. How have expectations of career versus marriage changed for women since 1950?
The Night Witches earn their nickname from the Germans, who find their relentless drive on bombing runs terrifying, but the men on their own side haze them, mock them, and call them “little princesses.” How does prejudice and misogyny drive the women of the Forty-Sixth to succeed? Did you know anything about the Night Witches before reading The Huntress?
Nina calls herself a savage because of her early life in the wilds around the lake with her murderous, unpredictable father. How did her upbringing equip her to succeed, first as a bomber pilot and then as a fugitive on the run? Does her outsider status make her see Soviet oppression more clearly than Yelena, who accepts it as the way things should be?
When Jordan first brings up suspicions about her stepmother at Thanksgiving, her theories are quashed by Anneliese’s plausible explanations. Did you believe Anneliese’s story at Thanksgiving, or Jordan’s instinct? When did you realize that Jordan’s stepmother and die Jägerin were one and the same?
“The ends justify the means.” Ian disagrees strongly, maintaining he will not use violence to pursue war criminals. Nina, on the other hand, has no problem employing violent methods to reach a target, and Tony stands somewhere between them on the ideological scale. How do their beliefs change as they work together? Who do you think is right?
Ian and Nina talk about lakes and parachutes, referencing the bad dreams and postwar baggage that inevitably come to those who have gone to war. How do Ian and Tony deal with their post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor guilt, as opposed to Nina and the Night Witches?