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WORK TITLE: THE BRIGHTWOOD CODE
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BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.monicahesse.com/
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 360
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Normal, IL; married.
EDUCATION:Bryn Mawr College, B.A., 2003; Johns Hopkins University, M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and author. Penguin Putnam, New York, NY, former manuscript reader; AARP, fact checker, beginning 2003, writer until 2006; Washington Post, Washington, DC, intern, 2007-9, then feature writer and host of weekly web chat, gender columnist, beginning 2018. Presenter at book festivals; guest on media programs.
AVOCATIONS:Movies about sports.
AWARDS:Washington Post Publishers Award, 2014; Livingston Award for Local Reporting, finalist, 2015; Edgar Award for Best Young-Adult Mystery, Mystery Writers of America, 2016, for Girl in the Blue Coat; Narrative Storytelling Award, Society for Feature Journalism, 2017.
WRITINGS
Author’s work has been translated into several languages, including Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian.
SIDELIGHTS
Monica Hesse began her career in journalism as an intern at the Washington Post; as a reporter and style editor for that newspaper, she covers stories ranging from political campaigns to awards presentations, royal weddings, and dog shows. Her skills as a journalist proved instrumental when Hesse began working on American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land, a true-crime chronicle of two arsonists who confounded Virginia police during the winter of 2012-13. Since turning her attention to young-adult fiction, she has been guided by personal interests, working within the science-fiction genre in her companion novels Stray and Burn and indulging her fascination for the World War II era in her historical novels Girl in the Blue Coat, The War Outside, and They Went Left.
Set in Amsterdam in 1943, Girl in the Blue Coat forms a counterpoint to the oft-told story of Anne Frank. Hanneke Bakker, a Dutch teenager, is struggling to survive the third year of the German occupation of the Netherlands. Food, fuel, and other necessities are in short supply and jobs are equally scarce. Although Hanneke’s work for a funeral director helps to support her unemployed parents, she also secretly trades ration cards taken from the recently deceased for black-market goods she then sells for cash. Although her wholesome appearance and friendly smile disarm even the soldiers at Nazi checkpoints, Hanneke carries a secret burden; her boyfriend died after she encouraged him to join the Resistance and fight the invading German forces. When she learns that Mirjam, a local Jewish teen in hiding, has disappeared from the secret room where she has been staying, she channels her guilt into helping find the girl. As Hanneke searches for Mirjam, she becomes involved with the Amsterdam Student Group, whose members have the same goal. After discovering that the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a local theater, is being used by the Nazis as a deportation center, she locates Mirjam and begins to see her rescue mission as a path to redemption for her missteps.
“Hanneke is a well drawn and many-faceted character,” noted a London Guardian online reviewer appraising Girl in the Blue Coat, and School Library Journal critic Donna Rosenblum described Hesse’s first historical novel as a tale of “love, betrayal, heroism, social responsibility, and atonement.” As Debbie Wenk noted in Voice of Youth Advocates, Girl in the Blue Coat exhibits “meticulous research and allows readers a fascinating look at life in occupied Europe.”
As The War Outside opens, Hesse confronts her readers with one of the most-regrettable eras in U.S. history: the internment of enemy aliens: Americans of Japanese and German heritage who lived in the country during World War II. The year is 1944, and Haruko and her mother arrive at the Crystal City internment camp in a state of confusion. The trip from their home in Colorado south to Texas has been stressful, but her father is at the camp—a former high school that is designed to support families—to meet them. During a dust storm, Haruko finds shelter with Margot, a teen of German extraction, and they become friends despite their differences. While Haruko is open about her concerns, which include her brother, a soldier, as well as her father, Margo remains somewhat reticent because Germans are in the minority at Crystal City. In fact, Margo’s worries may in fact be more pressing: as her mother’s health worsens, her father’s loyalties have realigned with his native Germany and his friends soon include several Nazis. Noting Hesse’s decision to tell her story using an alternating narrative, a Kirkus Reviews critic praised The War Outside as “an engaging mystery” as well as “a satisfying and bittersweet novel” that should appeal to historic mystery fans.
Zofia Lederman is eighteen and recently liberated from a Polish concentration camp when readers first meet her in They Went Left. The Jewish teen’s world fell apart three years ago, when almost everyone in her extended and close-knit family was put to death at Auschwitz. Hospitalized and hoping to recover lost memories, Zofia now confines her thoughts to her younger brother, Abek, who like her was saved from the gas chambers. After her release, she sets out to find him, traveling through Poland and into Germany, where she arrives at Foehrenwald, a refugee camp. Listening to others who have encountered similar tragedy, she is inspired and vows to stay the course, even as a possible future begins to form through her romance with fellow refugee Josef.
While a Kirkus Reviews critic characterized Hesse’s plotline in They Went Left as somewhat tenuous, the critic also cited the novel’s “well-researched setting and some genuinely touching emotional beats.” In the view of Michael Cart, writing in Booklist, Hesse’s historical novel is “superbly crafted” and resonant, and her World War II setting comes to life in “painstaking detail.”
In a Publishers Weekly interview, Hesse discussed the research she did while writing They Went Left. “I like to read actual documents, because I think that’s where you discover both humanity and nuance,” she told the interviewer. “What’s always fascinating to me is reading things like the student newspapers produced by the teenagers imprisoned in the camps. I always try to remind myself that no matter how large the event was, real people were trying to lead real lives, and oral histories and primary sources are where you learn about the human beings caught up in these events.”
Featuring futuristic themes, Hesse’s young-adult novel Stray focuses on Lona Sixteen Always, a teenager raised in a reputedly well-intentioned foster-care system called The Path. The Path professes to rescue abandoned or abused children and raise them away from any harmful influences. Until age eighteen, its charges inhabit a virtual world that is guided by a virtual role model named Julian. Fifty years ago, Julian was viewed as an example of the perfect child, and The Path now grooms their young charges to conform their personalities and character traits to the Julian ideal. To further eliminate individuality among these young people, names are mere identifiers: for example, Lona’s four-character name identifies her birth date and group assignment, Sixteen is her current age, and Always indicates her placement on the Julian Path. When she has the chance to mingle with teens in the real world, Lona experiences odd feelings and memories. Then she meets Fenn, an old friend who escaped from The Path and who now urges her to do likewise.
When readers rejoin Lona in Burn, she is known as Lona Seventeen Always. She is still searching for the family that haunts her memories and her dreams, but her perspective shifts as she realizes that her mother is alive. This insight changes everything: Lona quickly realizes that The Path is not what she thought: it is a first step toward an even greater evil.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2016, Michael Cart, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 76; January 1, 2020, Michael Cart, review of They Went Left, p. 89.
BookPage, April 5, 2016, Anita Lock, review of Girl in the Blue Coat; October, 2018, Lori K. Joyce, review of The War Outside, p. 27.
Horn Book Guide, fall, 2016, Elissa Gershowitz, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 127.
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2016, review of Girl in the Blue Coat; February 1, 2020, review of They Went Left; April 1, 2017, review of American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land.
Library Journal, June 15, 2016, Ilka Gordon, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 42.
Publishers Weekly, January 25, 2016, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 209; March 27, 2017, review of American Fire, p. 90.
School Library Journal, February, 2016, Sonna Rosenblum, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 100; July, 2018, Kaetlyn, Phillips, review of The War Outside, p. 73.
Voice of Youth Advocates, February, 2016, Debbie Wenk, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 58.
Washingtonian, June 2, 2008, Harry Jaffe, “Hesse’s Got Style.”
Washington Post, April 5, 2016, Annie Barrows, review of Girl in the Blue Coat.
ONLINE
Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/ (June 9, 2016), review of Girl in the Blue Coat.
Monica Hesse, http://www.monicahesse.com (June 25, 2020).
Publishers Weekly, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (September 25, 2018), author interview.
Monica Hesse is the national bestselling author of the true crime love story American Fire and the Edgar Award-winning young adult historical mystery novel Girl in the Blue Coat, which has been translated into a dozen languages and was shortlisted for the American Booksellers Association's Indies Choice Award. You can learn more about her latest book, They Went Left, here.
Monica is a columnist for the Washington Post, where she focuses on gender and its impact on society. Prior to that, she was a feature writer who covered royal weddings, dog shows, political campaigns, Academy Awards ceremonies, White House state dinners, and some events that felt like a mixture of all of the above. She has talked about these stories, and other things, on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, CSPAN, FOX and NPR, and she has been a winner of the Society for Feature Journalism's Narrative Storytelling award, and a finalist for a Livingston Award and a James Beard Award. Monica lives in Maryland. with her husband and a brainiac dog. All of her newspaper writing can be found here.
Extra Credit:
* From Normal, Illinois.
* Has heard all potential jokes about hailing from Normal, Illinois.
* Favorite books: "A Handmaid's Tale," "Ender's Game," "Moby Dick."
* Favorite places: grocery stores, libraries, country festivals, Istanbul.
* Left-handed.
* Good harmonizer.
* Vegetarian.
* Loves movies about sports, math, cooking (lukewarm on actual sports, math, cooking).
Monica Hesse
Monica Hesse is the author of the young adult historical fiction novel Girl in the Blue Coat, as well as the young adult science fiction novel Stray and its sequel, Burn. She is a feature writer for the Washington Post, where she has covered royal weddings, dog shows, political campaigns, Academy Awards ceremonies, White House state dinners, and some events that felt like a mixture of all of the above. She has talked about these stories, and other things, on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, CSPAN, FOX and NPR, and she has been a finalist for a Livingston Award and a James Beard Award. Monica hosts a weekly Washington Post chat, Web Hostess, and she lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and a brainiac dog.
Awards: Edgar (2017) see all
Genres: Young Adult Fiction
New and upcoming books
May 2024
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The Brightwood Code
Series
Stray
1. Stray (2013)
2. Burn (2014)
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Novels
Girl in the Blue Coat (2016)
The War Outside (2018)
They Went Left (2020)
The Brightwood Code (2024)
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Non fiction hide
American Fire (2017)
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Omnibus editions hide
Monica Hesse Collection (2020)
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Awards
2017 Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel : Girl in the Blue Coat
Monica Hesse: On Lesser-Known Historical Moments
In this interview, New York Times-bestselling author Monica Hesse discusses what inspired her new historical mystery, The Brightwood Code.
Robert Lee BrewerMay 16, 2024
Monica Hesse is the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in the Blue Coat, American Fire, The War Outside, and They Went Left, as well as a Pulitzer Prize finalist columnist at the Washington Post. She lives outside Washington, D.C., with her family. Monica invites you to visit her online at MonicaHesse.com and on Twitter @monicahesse.
Monica Hesse: On Lesser-Known Historical Moments
Monica Hesse
Photo by Cassidy Duhon
In this interview, Monica discusses what inspired her new historical mystery, The Brightwood Code, her advice for other writers, and more!
Name: Monica Hesse
Literary agent: Ginger Clark
Book title: The Brightwood Code
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release date: May 14, 2024
Genre/category: Historical mystery
Previous titles: Girl in the Blue Coat; They Went Left; The War Outside; American Fire
Elevator pitch: Edda’s job as a WWI Hello Girl turned disastrous when she made a secret, deadly mistake while trying to connect a crucial telephone call. Now she’s back in America, working as a Bell operator, when a mysterious voice contacts her begging for help—and Edda realizes that the plea is tied to the wartime past she’s tried desperately to forget.
Monica Hesse: On Lesser-Known Historical Moments
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What prompted you to write this book?
I’m always interested in exploring massive historical events from the perspectives we never learned about in school. Hello Girls were the first American women to serve in an official wartime capacity—the Army needed bilingual telephone operators who could facilitate calls between European and American troops, and they ended up turning to young women who already spoke French and who could be trained to work the equipment. These women served on the front lines, in earshot of exploding bombs, but they were never officially enlisted as military, and it took decades for their contributions to be recognized.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
LOL. The idea actually began as a whole other book. I’d written a draft of a different novel, which I loved a lot—but I kept getting stuck on my main character’s backstory. It wasn’t going to make a huge appearance in the plot, but I needed to know her story for myself. At one point I thought, Hmmm, what if she was previously a Hello Girl? And then from that moment on, I didn’t want it to be a minor backstory, I wanted it to be a whole book.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
The whole history of telephone operators in the U.S. is completely fascinating. When The Brightwood Code takes place, this would have been a fairly new profession for young women—the first telephone operators in history were teenage boys, but they were eventually decided to be too squirrelly and unreliable. Telephone companies thought that women might be a better fit, but at the time the only respectable professions for young women were nurse, librarian, and teacher. So, companies like Bell waged a really intentional campaign to both recruit young women and also to convince their families that connecting telephone calls was a good job for nice girls. They required all of their new employees to remain single, and they put tea carts and pianos in the breakroom so that young women could carry on their classical music studies.
Monica Hesse: On Lesser-Known Historical Moments
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
Of all my books, The Brightwood Code is the most straight-up, page-turning mystery I’ve ever written. It’s set in the past, but the themes of young women trying to navigate a complicated world feel completely current.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Write.
It’s the most basic advice, but I can’t count the number of aspiring writers I’ve met who have been carrying around an idea for years and have never put anything to page. The only way to figure out whether you can do it is to do it—and remember, it doesn’t have to be good yet. You can make it good later, in the second or fourth draft. But the words on the page can’t be good if the words on the page don’t even exist.
The Brightwood Code. By Monica Hesse. May 2024. 336p. Little, Brown, $18.99 (9780316045650). Gr. 9-12.
Edda, a former Hello Girl working to connect calls on the front in France during WWI, is haunted by a deadly mistake that cost a whole ship of soldiers their lives. Her grief has followed her back home to the States, where she works in Washington, DC, as a telephone operator. But now the war is over, and a mysterious voice has been calling her line begging for her help. Edda has very little to go on, but the caller's pleas seem to be connected to her work in France. Now Edda must go through the list of the soldiers she couldn't save and find their families to unravel the mystery that even she doesn't understand. Jumping back and forth between war-torn France and the bustle of the U.S. capital, the narrative detail's Edda determination to right her wrongs and set her ghosts to rest. Hesse's historical mystery details the stress, responsibility, and power of those who worked behind the scenes during WWI. Fans of Hesse's impeccably crafted WWII novels (They Went Left, 2020) will devour this.--Vi Kwartler
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Kwartler, Vi. "The Brightwood Code." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 18, 18 May 2024, p. 53. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A804017574/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7781374f. Accessed 9 Aug. 2024.
Hesse, Monica THE BRIGHTWOOD CODE Little, Brown (Teen None) $18.99 5, 14 ISBN: 9780316045650
A World War I story that shines a light on a little-known group of heroic young women is the latest from noted historical fiction author Hesse.
It's 1918, and 18-year-old Edda St. James works the overnight shift as an operator at Bell System's Washington, D.C., Central switchboard. The hours suit her: She can sleep the day away, trying to escape memories of her months in France. Flashbacks to her experiences near the front lines gradually disclose details of how those months shaped her. Edda shocked her Baltimore socialite parents when she applied to be a Hello Girl for the American Expeditionary Forces. She proved to be a natural in memorizing codes, connecting calls, and conversing in French. But her confidence in her abilities was swept away in a single night when, unable to remember the code, she could not put a connection through--and 34 American soldiers died. Back in the States, Edda blames herself--and when a voice on the other end of the switchboard line demands she tell the truth, she realizes that someone knows about her deadly mistake. Edda takes Theo, a fellow tenant at her aunt's boardinghouse, into her confidence, and together they try to determine what the anonymous voice wants. The large cast of characters, who are cued white, are fully developed, and the short chapters and engaging writing will have readers racing to discover the secret.
A well-researched work that stands out for its explorations of guilt and trauma. (author's note) (Historical mystery. 14-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Hesse, Monica: THE BRIGHTWOOD CODE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A786185731/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4c7c4045. Accessed 9 Aug. 2024.
The Brightwood Code
Monica Hesse. Little, Brown, $18.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-316-04565-0
This gripping psychological thriller features a little-known chapter of WWI history: the story of the Hello Girls, individuals employed by the U.S. Army to operate phone lines in France. In 1918, 18-year-old Edda returns home from her station in France, haunted by a mistake she made that cost her job--and possibly others' lives. Now, she resides in her aunt's boardinghouse in Washington, D.C., and works night shifts as an American Bell Telephone operator. One night, she gets a call: "You have to tell the truth before it's too late," followed by the ominous secret code, "Brightwood." Hesse (They Went Left) skillfully portrays Edda's heightened emotional state and post-traumatic stress, as well as her urgency to untangle a mystery and resolve her guilt. As Edda gathers clues and tracks down possible callers, her sympathetic-board inghouse neighbor Theo joins her search, which adds friendship and romantic tension that brightens her solitary existence. Narrative flashbacks to the harrowing WWI battle zone, interspersed throughout Edda's richly drawn present day in D.C. and Baltimore (complete with marches for women's suffrage), tease out the mystery in this worthwhile historical novel. Characters read as whire. Ages 14-up. Agent: Ginger Clark. Ginger Clark Literary. (May)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"The Brightwood Code." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 9, 4 Mar. 2024, p. 48. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A786742173/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c6e09d35. Accessed 9 Aug. 2024.