My first two novels were about fictitious men in the Civil War and both followed a vague timeline scripted by history. The story of Andrée (Dedee) de Jongh, on the other hand, offered a chance to write something different. Dedee’s story is about a real person, and while little was written about her life in WW2, the parameters of writing changed dramatically. Writing about a real person meant that I had to be true to her defined character in every word I wrote about her—as opposed to writing...