I think The Nightingale is my best, most mature, most moving novel, but maybe that's just because I love these characters. I love the setting.

People forget that old women were young once, but d'you think we old women forget? In my heart, I'm still thirty.

Andrée De Jongh story led me to other stories of women who joined the Resistance in France. I found literally dozens of memoirs written by women who had become spies and couriers and helped to create the escape network. These women were like action-star heroes.

My next guest [ for party with five favorite fictional characters] would be Scarlett from Gone With The Wind. I mean, come on, I have to know if she ever got Rhett back.

I love women being the heroes of the piece. There is just something so dramatic and important about this story [The Nightingale ].

It felt like an oversight to me, something that needed to be corrected. They [women who hid Jewish children] deserved to be understood and remembered.

In the end, the best part of the whole book [The Nightingale ] to me was the research, reading about the courageous, ordinary French women who put their lives on the line to save others. It was really inspirational.