By Heather Chadwick
Convinced that she was betrayed to the Nazis by Jeanne Maulet, mother of her best friend, Irène returns to Paris in 1945 as an orphan. She begins to rebuild her life as an artisan in the traditional furniture making area of the city, the Faubourg St Antoine, where her struggle for truth mirrors that of Paris and France as a whole. Paris is itself a character in the novel, bitterly divided over the Occupation and its role as a Colonial master. Irène marries Marcel, a political idealist, but it’s only in 1995, when he sacrifices his life to save someone from a fire that she begins to realise what his values mean for her and for Paris. Grieving and angry, she rejects the idea of the noble camp survivor and is almost arrested for Holocaust denial; but she has at last begun to realise the value of love, and finally comes to a kind of peace and acceptance of the past.
The novel is about betrayal and its consequences and the difficulty of learning to love after the horrors of war.
Heather Chadwick
Heartwood came out of a year spent living in the 12th arrondissement in Paris, where I became fascinated by the wall plaques mounted outside schools and public buildings, numbering the victims of Vichy-led deportations. I was inspired by reading first-hand accounts of life in the neighbourhood in the 1940s, where I found the story of a girl who came back from Auschwitz and confronted her betrayer in the street.
Heartwood also came out of experiences of present day Paris: from memories of eating sumac flavoured carrots, drinking beer and mint tea on the edge of the multi-ethnic Aligre market; exploring the quirky workshops and elegant galleries of the 12th, which between them keep alive the tradition of the artisan furniture makers.
Born in Lancashire and educated in Yorkshire, in Luddite country, I grew up with a vivid sense of how history leaves it marks on landscape and people. Cambridge took me away from my roots and though I’ve lived and worked in Scotland, Paris and Devon, I’ve never quite found them again.
I’ve been part of a Devon-based writing group for some years and in 2016 published an anthology of our work entitled ‘Words without Walls’, sold in aid of Refugee Support Devon. I’m looking for a publisher for Heartwood, and am currently writing a contemporary novel based in Devon.