Emily Bleeker is a best-selling author whose dual-time-line novel When We Were Enemies moves between a World War II prisoner of war camp in Indiana and the feverish fame of contemporary Hollywood in a story that was partly inspired by her own family history.

Hi there. I'm your host, Jenny Wheeler, and today on Binge Reading, Emily talks about intimate betrayals made in the promise of fame and tells the remarkable story of how a serious health crisis gave her the Eureka moment when she was determined to write fiction.

Now she's an award-winning best-selling author with 2 million readers worldwide.

Links to places and things mentioned in the episode

Camp Atterbury

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Atterbury-Muscatatuck

Operations Allies Welcome

https://www.dhs.gov/allieswelcome

What Emily is reading now:

Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein;  

https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Love-Brainwashing-Attachment-Totalitarian/dp/1138677973

What You Do To Me by Rochelle Weinstein,

https://www.rochelleweinstein.com/books/what-you-do-to-me

Strong Like You by Travis (T.L.)  Simpson.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/178619792

Where to find Emily online:

Website: emilybleeker.com

Email: [email protected]

Introducing Book Club favorite Emily Bleeker

Emily Bleeker - dual time line saga from WWII POW camp to contemporary Hollywood

Jenny Wheeler: But now, here's Emily. Hello, Emily, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us.

Emily Bleeker: Hello, thank you for having me.

Jenny Wheeler: Emily, When We Were Enemies, which is your seventh book and the one that we're talking about today, is partly set in a POW camp, a prisoner of war camp in Indiana during World War II.

And it dips into aspects of your own family history. I wondered if you'd like to start by just giving us an idea of how it all came together.

Emily Bleeker: Yes, sure. It was years and years ago. My dad told me a story about how my grandmother worked in a POW camp in Mississippi, and I had no idea what he was talking about because I did not even know that was a thing. So it went in one ear and out the other.

But I have just become more interested in my grandmother's life and her story.

I decided to do some research on the topic and found out that was a real thing during World War Two.

And the other interesting part of that story about my grandmother is that she met an Italian priest there. She was married to my grandfather and they had a platonic friendship that continued for the rest of his life.

He would draw pictures on postcards and send them to her every so often throughout the rest of his life.

Italian POWs in US camps

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, I must admit, I didn't realize that that the U. S. had European prisoners of war, like Italians and Germans and people from the continent shipped to the U. S. to be put into camp.

So that was a revelation to me as well. Tell me, just getting back to your grandmother, did that priest go back to Italy? Because I gather quite a few of them stayed on the states afterwards.

Emily Bleeker: Yes, he did go back to Italy. He didn't stay, though you're right. Many did. Many joined the Italian Service Unit.

More than 90 percent of the POWs joined that unit after World War II and then became a part of the U. S. Army. So doing service missions, mostly building ships and things like that.

Jenny Wheeler: And I think it becomes clear in the story as you read it, if I remember correctly that Mussolini actually collapsed and the Italians more or less came over to our side before the war officially ended.

A few months before perhaps the war ended, those prisoners were no longer quite the enemy, were they?

Emily Bleeker: That's very true. In fact, a lot of them were conscripted. Many times there is a tradition of hiding their sons so that they wouldn't be conscripted into the army at that time.