By Bonnie Meekums
In 2021 I self-published my second book, a war-time novel, My Upside Down World. It’s set in World War Two. I’m a Quaker. If there’s one thing Quakers are known for across the world, it’s that we tend to be pacifists.
At the start of My Upside Down World, Lily, whose adoptive parents die on the first night of the London Blitz, is pregnant for the fifth time. She doesn’t tell her husband, Stan, who is about to leave for war. Lily has always looked to Stan to make the decisions. Nevertheless, she makes the difficult decision to move north to safety, where she has to start earning money. As a result, her self-confidence grows so much that when she returns to London, she asserts herself, first with her son’s headmaster and then with some racist thugs.
I knew something of the wartime period, having had parents who lived through it. I was also a post-war baby. Most writers write about what they know, but sometimes we don’t stop to consider why certain themes keep cropping up in our writing. When I was asked by Authors’ Lounge to write this article, it got me thinking about the themes that run through both my war-time novel. They might also be important to my readers.
The first theme is loss and separation. In both novels, there is a woman who, as a child, was taken from her mother. I spent three months in the hospital as a child. At the age of three, left alone in the hospital, I felt abandoned and thought my parents would never come for me. Since then, I’ve lost both parents, a brother, and a couple of dear friends. I hope my readers haven’t experienced traumatic separations, but if they have, they might recognize themselves in my stories. Whether or not we have suffered in that way, most of us know the fear or reality of separation from loved ones. When we see ourselves mirrored on the page, we can feel less alone.
The second theme running through both my books is migration. I migrated from the South to the North of England in 1980. That might not sound like a big deal, but it was a bit like moving countries. Even the language was slightly different. Since then, my daughter has migrated to Aotearoa / New Zealand (leaving me with that feeling of separation all over again, despite feeling happy for her). One of my ancestors migrated from India to the Caribbean, possibly via the UK, and my DNA tells me another was almost certainly enslaved from West Africa. My dad was very dark; yet, in the Caucasian area in which I was born, as for Lily in My Upside Down World, no-one questioned his heritage.
Family and relationships are also central to both of my books. My husband and I created a step-family the day we married, and we continue to be enriched by its growing numbers. I feel blessed to have step-sons, a daughter, sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren both genetically linked and not, all of whom I love dearly.
Both books have a minor theme of the supernatural. Rachel, the main character in A Kind of Family is the only person who sees and hears 1960s Aggie. Lily travels in time and space from this war-time novel, My Upside Down World. I guess this might link to my belief in the power of the unseen. As a Quaker, I believe we can all access divine guidance.
I also believe we all have equal inherent value, whether we know it or not, and whether or not we are treated accordingly – hence my interest (which threads through my books) in marriage equality, combatting racism, and challenging assumptions about the rhetoric of war. Through her friendship with Hilda, Lily begins to see Germans are ordinary people like her, and while she also knows Hitler must be stopped, she feels increasingly uneasy about the rhetoric of ‘them’ and ‘us.’ It’s a natural move from there to challenge racism when she encounters it.
I guess how Lily argues with Hilda is similar to how I argue with myself about pacifism. Current events make a simplistic analysis impossible, and I know I would defend my children and grandchildren if push came to shove. Would I take up arms? Probably not. As I am currently, I would be more likely to offer voluntary psychological help and support (I am an internationally known Dance Movement Therapist).
Writing about war has, without me intending this, become topical. I hope that might change, but I suspect many of us will be having internal or overt arguments about the means of resistance for the foreseeable future. I hope readers will find something they can relate to in Lily’s deliberations. My next novel, though, might be an uplifting romance.
Follow Bonnie on Twitter and Instagram @bonniemeekums, or check out her website, where you can also sign up for her newsletter.
You can buy My Upside Down World here:
[i] My Upside Down World is, on the face of it, very different from my first war-time novel, A Kind of Family (AKF), published in 2020 by Between the Lines (Willow River Press). AKF is set in the current day, and the main character is in a same-sex relationship. It focuses on the question: What constitutes family? (spoiler alert: it isn’t necessarily defined by genetics). Along the way, the story deals with other universal issues including relationships, loss and grief, and becoming a mother.
