Ask the Author: Christopher B. Emery
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Christopher B. Emery
My current project is an epic A Narrative Nonfiction. . .
JACQUELINE
Based on a True Story
Overview
After his mother, Jacqueline, died in 2010, author and former White House Usher Christopher B. Emery set out to understand the woman who raised him — a mother he came to describe as having a “frozen heart.” What began as a personal inquiry evolved into a fifteen-year historical and archival investigation, uncovering a concealed wartime life involving Nazi officers, the French Underground, and the existence of a daughter Jacqueline was forced to surrender — a child whose life remained hidden for more than half a century.
In occupied Paris, Jacqueline Marchal came of age amid war, class pressure, and moral collapse. To survive, she navigated the rarefied world of the Hôtel Raphael, forming relationships with German personnel that placed her uncomfortably close to power — figures later linked to the Luftwaffe, Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda apparatus, and the Valkyrie plot against Hitler. Her trajectory carried her from Paris to Bavaria, then to postwar Indochina and to America — a life shaped less by ideology than by adaptation under extreme pressure.
Told through a dual timeline, Jacqueline interweaves the author’s present-day effort, alongside his sisters, to authenticate documents, reconstruct events, and understand what lay behind their mother’s silence with Jacqueline’s wartime survival. The investigation deepens with the discovery of the daughter Jacqueline surrendered in wartime France and culminates in a full-circle revelation when a French nephew is identified — raised continents away yet shaped by the same emotional distance — revealing how trauma and silence replicated themselves across generations.
This book does not attempt to prove espionage, nor to resolve questions the historical record cannot support. Instead, it examines the moral ambiguity, suspicion, and survival strategies imposed by wartime Europe, particularly on women whose lives intersected with power.
At its core, Jacqueline is not a story about secrets kept but about the cost of survival — and the quiet inheritance of silence.
Available in 2027
JACQUELINE
Based on a True Story
Overview
After his mother, Jacqueline, died in 2010, author and former White House Usher Christopher B. Emery set out to understand the woman who raised him — a mother he came to describe as having a “frozen heart.” What began as a personal inquiry evolved into a fifteen-year historical and archival investigation, uncovering a concealed wartime life involving Nazi officers, the French Underground, and the existence of a daughter Jacqueline was forced to surrender — a child whose life remained hidden for more than half a century.
In occupied Paris, Jacqueline Marchal came of age amid war, class pressure, and moral collapse. To survive, she navigated the rarefied world of the Hôtel Raphael, forming relationships with German personnel that placed her uncomfortably close to power — figures later linked to the Luftwaffe, Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda apparatus, and the Valkyrie plot against Hitler. Her trajectory carried her from Paris to Bavaria, then to postwar Indochina and to America — a life shaped less by ideology than by adaptation under extreme pressure.
Told through a dual timeline, Jacqueline interweaves the author’s present-day effort, alongside his sisters, to authenticate documents, reconstruct events, and understand what lay behind their mother’s silence with Jacqueline’s wartime survival. The investigation deepens with the discovery of the daughter Jacqueline surrendered in wartime France and culminates in a full-circle revelation when a French nephew is identified — raised continents away yet shaped by the same emotional distance — revealing how trauma and silence replicated themselves across generations.
This book does not attempt to prove espionage, nor to resolve questions the historical record cannot support. Instead, it examines the moral ambiguity, suspicion, and survival strategies imposed by wartime Europe, particularly on women whose lives intersected with power.
At its core, Jacqueline is not a story about secrets kept but about the cost of survival — and the quiet inheritance of silence.
Available in 2027
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