Geraldine McCaughrean, British author of the Printz Award-winning novel The White Darkness, presents her latest young adult novel Under a Fire-Red Sky, which follows four English teens as they struggle to navigate the beginning of WWII. Children are being evacuated from London and sent to the countryside for their safety; just as one of the protagonists, Gemmy, is scheduled to leave, she disembarks, prompting three other teens in her railcar—Olive, Lawrence, and Franklin—to follow suit. Each one has their own reasons for remaining in London, but as the Blitz begins, the four new friends must rely on one another to survive. In an email conversation with PW, the Carnegie Medalist reflected on the experience of diving into the harrowing history of the war.
What was your goal in showcasing a quartet of characters?
At the start, the four aren’t well acquainted. They are also very different from one another. Even so, each one harbors the same fear of staying somewhere they don’t want to be. As disagreeable as Gemmy is, her jumping down from the carriage door mesmerizes the others into following her. Lawrence has good reason to get home; he has serious work to do. Olive hates the idea of being far from home and leaving her beloved father, especially if a war really is coming. Franklin wants to be anywhere his parents won’t find him. And Gemmy ultimately jumps off the train because she can’t stop thinking about this van she saw in the woods; she might even be able to hide there from her abusive father. Hopefully, the reader agrees with them that they, too, are right to jump down.
How did you balance portraying the characters’ interpersonal arcs with highlighting the horrors of war they each witness throughout the book?
Before the Blitz, many people were calling WWII the “phony war,” because nothing was happening in Britain at the time that the teens were meant to leave. So these characters were free to escape the train and go home and cheerfully go about doing whatever they wanted. Olive convinced her mother that she and her friends were pursuing useful, scholarly things while Lawrence supplied Gemmy and Franklin with all the information they could need to know about the area. But when open war finally begins, Franklin is up country alone, and he’s the first to see the sky fall, to see the horror, the destruction, the deaths. From this moment, everything changes.
My dad, who was a firefighter during the war, never spoke at all about what he saw. It seemed a shame because those of us who came about later and who grew up knowing nothing about the war were sort of ignorant to potential future trip wires lying in wait.
What did your research process for this novel entail?
I heaved every useful book I owned off the shelves; my daughter came around with even more. I was even given advice from professional historians at the Imperial War Museum! Even with all this information, however, the Second World War was complex, and it was real, so there was only so much research I could do. I wasn’t born until after the war was over, too, so there was a part of me that wondered if I should even attempt to write such a book. I’m very grateful for the help I received in crafting it.
What’s next for you?
For the first time in 40 years, I’m working on an adult novel.
Under a Fire-Red Sky by Geraldine McCaughrean. Flatiron, $24.99 Nov. 4 ISBN 978-1-250-22554-2; $13.99 paper ISBN 978-1-2502-2553-5
