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WHILE the story of the special team of operators I named The Virtues is entirely fictional, set in a fictional town, and comprised of fictional characters who form a fictional military division, every single one of my fictional heavenly heroines was inspired by a real World War II heroine and the story was inspired by real events.

Today, Homeland’s Hope IS 99 cents! You can get it in ebook form at this link.

Here are the amazing stories that inspired the writing of Homeland’s Hope, Part 2 of the Virtues and Valor Serialized Story.

The fictional character Virginia Benoit is inspired by the very real heroine Josephine Baker.

Josephine Baker’s heroic actions during the second World War are less well known even to this day. Born into poverty in St. Louis, Missouri in 1906 as Freda Josephine McDonald, she would later be known to the world as Josephine Baker. Despite her dire circumstances as a child, she loved dancing and learned how by watching and mimicking the dancers at the famous Booker T. Washington Theater. At the age of 10, she won a dance competition and decided on the spot that she wanted to be a dancer when she grew up.

In 1917 she witnessed the St. Louis race riots and the “black exodus” that followed. A sea of people fleeing the murderous riot behind them as they crossed the St. Louis Bridge toward her was forever etched in her mind. What she saw in those days spurred her heart to spend much of her adult life confronting and fighting racism.

In 1925, after spending much of her career dancing in New York City, Josephine went to Paris to perform in La Revue Nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Paris loved Josephine Baker, and she loved Paris. Soon, she was among the highest paid entertainers in France of any race, a stage and movie sensation. She came to be known in various circles as the “Black Pearl,” the “Bronze Venus” and even the “Creole Goddess.”

In 1928, Josephine went on a European tour and witnessed how racist much of Europe was becoming. Nazi run newspapers condemned her for performing on the same stage as “Aryan” performers, and some places even threw ammonia bombs at her. After that, Josephine rather correctly equated racism with Nazism.

In 1934, Josephine took the starring role in a French film, Zuzu, a great success in Paris. The name Zuzu comes from Zuzana, a Czech/Slovak form of Susana, but for whatever reason it stuck and Josephine’s close friends often called her Zuzu in private and in letters after the film’s release.

In 1936, the same year Jesse Owens won four Olympic gold medals in Berlin, Josephine returned to America to perform, but was treated with open racism and general hostility. She returned to France, heartbroken by the way her home country had treated her. When she returned to Paris, she married Jean Lion and became a French citizen.

On November 9, 1938, Nazis in Germany destroyed Jewish homes, synagogues, and businesses in what is today called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). After that night, Josephine joined the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism.

An organization in France called Deuzieme Bureau was looking for undercover agents who could afford to work without pay and who could travel without suspicion. They approached Josephine and asked her to be an agent for them. Without hesitation, Josephine embraced the opportunity. After several weeks of training in weapons, self-defense, and memory, she was given her first mission: attending parties at the Italian embassy and reporting the information she overheard.

Her chateau, which was a large rural home in southern France she had named Les Milandes, became a stopping-point for Resistance workers, a safe house for refugees, and occasionally was used to store weapons. Eventually, the Germans grew suspicious and started watching her home, and she left. She traveled through Spain, Portugal, and North Africa, performing, attending parties, and listening. Just like the fictional Virginia Benoit, the real Josephine Baker used invisible ink and wrote what she saw and heard in the margins of her sheet music.

In June 1941, she became very ill and was hospitalized in Casablanca until December 1942. When she was finally released and strong enough to perform, she performed for the Allied troops, insisting that the audience, which was traditionally seated with white soldiers up front and black soldiers in the back, be desegregated before she performed.

After the war, Josephine received the Legion of Honour with the rosette of the Resistance, and became the first American born woman to receive the Croix de Guerre. These are two of France’s highest military honors.

When the war ended, Josephine returned to her chateau, Les Milandes. In 1947, she married again, this time to French orchestra leader Jo Bouillon. She adopted 12 children, all of different nationalities, which she referred to as her “rainbow tribe”. Her intent was to impress upon the outside world that people of different colors and ethnicities could live together as a family.

The “incident” with the radio personality which fictional characters Radden and Benoit stage is based on an actual event which occurred in New York’s Stork Club on the night of October 16, 1951. To set the record straight more than half a century later, by all accounts the radio personality, Walter Winchell, was utterly innocent of any wrong-doing. He was simply also present when the incident occurred. The blame for the mistreatment Josephine Baker suffered should have fallen squarely and fairly upon the shoulders of Stork Club owner, Sherman Billingsley. The problem was that no one had ever heard of Billingsley while absolutely every “Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea” knew the name of Walter Winchell in 1951.

Josephine continued to perform her own show at the Roxy to sold-out crowds throughout the remainder of the season, though the Stork Club incident continued to haunt her career in the United States from that day forward. Despite bad press, Baker took several trips back and forth to America in the 1950s and 1960s to help with the growing Civil Rights Movement.

On August 28, 1963, two separate parades were held for male and female civil rights leaders during the famous March on Washington. The men marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. The women—including Josephine Baker, Daisy Bates, and Rosa Parks—marched down Independence Avenue. When the groups met at the Mall, on the platform, Josephine stood right beside Martin Luther King, Jr., and was the only female speaker at the march, preceding the famous “I Have a Dream” speech by Reverend King.

Whenever she performed in America, she insisted on a nonsegregation clause in her contracts. Most places honored them, causing a desegregation in clubs that never would have happened otherwise. The NAACP eventually named May 20th “Josephine Baker Day” in honor of her lifelong efforts to end racism.

In 1973, Josephine performed at Carnegie Hall and was received with a standing ovation. Two years later, she performed at the Bobino Theater in Paris to celebrate the 50th anniversary of her Paris debut. Celebrities in attendance included Sophia Loren and Princess Grace of Monaco. Just days later, on April 12, 1975, Josephine Baker died in her sleep. She was 69 years old.

At her wake, an estimated 20,000 people lined the streets for her funeral procession. For her service during the war, Josephine Baker became the first American in history to receive full military honors in a French funeral.

The complete Virtues and Valor series is on a rolling sale through June 4th! Here are the dates:

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WHILE the story of the special team of operators I named The Virtues is entirely fictional, set in a fictional town, and comprised of fictional characters who form a fictional military division, every single one of my fictional heavenly heroines was inspired by a real World War II heroine and the story was inspired by real events.

Today, Temperance’s Trial IS FREE until May 28th. Yes! FREE. You can get it in ebook form at this link.

Here are the amazing stories that inspired the writing of Temperance’s Trial, Part 1 of the Virtues and Valor Serialized Story.

The hometown of fictional Marie Gilbert and her brother Edward, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, is an actual place and the great and honored reverend Pastor André Trocmé as well as Pastor Edouard Theis were actual people. These men of God inspired the entire town to smuggle uncounted Jewish children and their parents, possibly as many as five thousand or more, out of the country and to safety. Those children who could not be safely evacuated were taken in and “adopted” by families who informed the Nazis that the children were visiting relatives or war orphans.

When the Gestapo or the corrupt and collaborates Vichy police would raid the town, the citizens would routinely risk their lives by hiding children and parents anywhere they could and using elaborate schemes to signal when the coast was clear. Many residents were eventually arrested by the Gestapo. Sadly, the Reverand Trocmé’s own cousin, Daniel Trocmé, was sent to Maidanek concentration camp and tortured to death.

It may be significant to note that the townspeople received contributions from the Quakers, the Salvation Army, the American Congregational Church, as well as other Jewish and Christian ecumenical groups, the French Protestant student organization Cimade, and the Swiss Help to Children. All of these organizations helped to ensure that the Jewish refugees were housed and fed and could travel in relative safety to Switzerland or other safe havens.

In 1990, the entire town became the only French town and one of only two towns on earth to be recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” for their humanitarianism and bravery under extreme danger during the Second World War.

Marie Gilbert, code named Temperance, was inspired by the incredible Eileen Mary “Didi” Nearne who served as a wireless operator in the Spiritualist Network in Occupied France under the code named “Rose.”

Like Temperance, Didi Nearne, her brother Francis, and her sister Jacqueline fled the Nazis as the German war machine rolled into France. They eventually made their way to Great Britain via Spain.

All three of the Nearnes entered service with the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, which was called “Churchill’s secret army.” A group within the SOE was called the F Section Networks. These networks were established in France to transmit and receive coded messages just like Temperance does in Temperance’s Trial. Due to the ease of detection and the German’s determination to track down these operators, it was one of the most dangerous duties assigned to agents within the SOE.

While Didi’s sister, Jacqueline, was sent to France to act as a courier (much like Temperance’s friend, Prudence), Didi stayed in England as a signals operator and received the encoded messages coming from France. After some time, she volunteered to go to France and act as a wireless operator for the F Section.

On March 2, 1944, Didi became one of only 39 women to parachute into Occupied France. She used the aliases Mademoiselle du Tort, Jacqueline Duterte, and Alice Wood – and went by the code name “Rose”. She worked as part of Operation Mitchel, which organized finances for the resistance. During her first five months in France, she transmitted an astonishing 105 messages.

After many, many narrow escapes, including a time on a train when a Nazi soldier offered to carry the suitcase containing her wireless radio, Didi was finally arrested. While in Paris, she had sent a coded transmission from her room, much like my character Temperance. Within minutes, the Gestapo arrived and found her in possession of her wireless rig.

According to wartime records, Nearne “survived, in silence, the full revolting treatment of the baignoire” in the torture chamber of the Paris headquarters of the Gestapo on the banks of the Rue des Saussaies.

She nearly died from the torture. They beat her, stripped her, and repeatedly submerged her in a bath of ice cold water until she started to black out. Yet, she did not break. She stuck to her story of being an innocent French girl who had been duped into helping someone by sending messages she didn’t understand in return for money to buy eggs and bread.

She never once revealed her true identity. She never told of the other agents with whom she worked. Despite days of endless torture, she never gave up any information of planned operations.

At the time, Eileen Mary “Didi” Nearne was only 23 years old.

On August 15, 1944, she was sent to the infamous Ravensbrück concentration camp near Berlin, and from there was sent through several forced labor camps. She refused to work in any of the camps, even under threat of being shot. Instead, she defied her captors to shoot her, and ended up being transferred each time instead.

Eventually, she ended up in a camp in Silesia. There Didi finally realized that the only way she would survive this experience would be to give in and work otherwise she would starve. During the bitter cold winter in December of 1944, the Nazis moved Didi to the Markleberg camp, near Leipzig, where she worked on a road-repair gang for 12 hours a day.

On April 13, 1945, while being transferred to yet another camp, along with two French girls from a work gang, Didi escaped. The trio evaded their pursuers by hiding in the forest. Astonishingly, they were apprehended by the SS in Markkleeberg, but she used her French language skills to fool her captors into letting them go. In Leipzig, a Catholic priest hid her until the arrival of the United States troops.

Sadly, American intelligence officers initially identified her as a Nazi collaborator and held her at a detention center alongside captured SS personnel. Once London verified her identity as a secret agent, the Americans finally released her.

After the war, Eileen Mary “Didi” Nearne was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government, that nation’s highest award given to foreigners, and was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by King George VI for services rendered in France during the enemy occupation.

Given what she underwent at the hands of her captors for years and years, her very survival is remarkable. When asked how she kept going, she replied, “The will to live. Willpower. That’s the most important. You should not let yourself go. It seemed that the end would never come, but I always believed in destiny, and I had a hope.”

Didi lived with her sister Jacqueline until her sister’s death in 1982. Afterward, she lived alone, a total recluse, haunted by her experiences as a captive of the Gestapo.

When Eileen Mary “Didi” Nearne died alone on September 2, 2010, it was several days before her death was discovered. It wasn’t until officials looking through her belongings hoping to find a relative whom they could contact that they discovered her true identity. Once they realized her incredible bravery and service, the entire community of Torquay, England, came together and gave her a funeral worthy of such an amazing war heroine with full military honors.

Unsurprisingly, there are very few actual photographs of Didi from the war and none of her operating a wireless rig. For the cover of this book, another suitable individual was selected. Pictured on the cover in place of “Temperance” and operating a wireless radio is none other than Mrs. Mac.

The complete Virtues and Valor series is on a rolling sale today through June 4th! Here are the dates:

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Praise God the Almighty, Love Makes Way is FINALLY on Amazon is ebook!

Wow. What a crazy four months of backs and forth – dozens and dozens of emails. I pray I never have to go through that again. 

But we’re celebrating today!

If you’ve been waiting for it to come to Amazon, you can get it at this link. If you’ve already read it and loved it, please leave a review. If you know someone who’d love it, please share it!

One reader said this:

Story flowed well from start to finish. I had to remind myself to put the book down and get some sleep every night. Loved it! Beautiful romance. Military details and action were fascinating. Gospel references were skillfully woven into the story and very real.

Get ready for a high-seas adventure!

U.S. Army Special Forces sniper Gerald “Jerry” McBride is no stranger to danger, but his heart faces uncharted territory when he reconnects with surgical nurse Olive Duncan. Years after she patched his wounds in a German hospital, their chance reunion at Fort Campbell sparks a romance that sweeps both of them off their feet. When Jerry invites Olive as his plus-one to a friend’s wedding on a Caribbean cruise, he’s ready to take the leap with a ring in his pocket.

But the ship’s idyllic voyage hides a deadly undercurrent. A Chinese-backed plot to smuggle thousands of weapons into Haiti threatens to destabilize the region, and the pirates orchestrating it have infiltrated the crew.

When the pirates take the cruise ship with Jerry’s special forces team on board, it turns the wedding venue from a celebration into a battlefield.

They have no weapons and no gear. Can they take back the ship and save the people they love, or will celebration turn to tragedy?

*I am migrating my store to my company’s website at https://www.oliviakimbrellpress.com. Any future orders will go through that store!