Jenny Ashcroft, author of The Echoes of Love, a historical love story set in Crete both before the Second World War and during the occupation, is on the blog talking about the inspiration behind the book and its setting.
Like Eleni, the main character in The Echoes of Love, I can’t remember the first summer I spent in Greece. I was just a baby when my parents took me to meet our family there, not even a year old, but I’m reliably informed I spent much of my time sleeping in beds made of beach towels, and in the crook of various relatives’ arms. We returned again the following year though, then again the one following, and with each new trip we made, my memories grew: of first swims in the Mediterranean, playing Uno with my cousins on my Aunty Noola’s balcony, eating her bolognaise spiced with cinnamon in a packed, noisy kitchen, and my dad carrying me around the Acropolis in the blistering heat. Slowly but surely, summer by summer, Greece carved itself a very large place in my heart.
My paternal grandmother was Greek: she met my British grandfather at the liberation of Athens in 1944, and travelled to England to marry him in 1946. Although she never lived in Greece again, I know she never stopped missing it, and she left a huge legacy of love for her home behind her. It’s perhaps no surprise then that I’ve always dreamt of setting a book there. For years, I’ve been turning characters and scenes in my mind, adding to them a little more every time I returned to Greece, taking my children back to the same beaches and tavernas my parents took me to. Something eluded me though. I couldn’t quite settle on a tale.
Then, a couple of years ago, I discovered that, at the end of the 1930s, my grandmother met a young German man whilst he was holidaying in Athens, both of them enjoying a summer together, neither aware of how imminently they were to become enemies. I knew instantly that I’d found my story: of a half-English, half-Greek woman called Eleni, and a German man called Otto, who fall in love in Greece in the peace of 1936, only to be reunited in 1941 under the Nazi occupation.
Whilst my family were in Athens throughout the war, it is in Crete that I decided to set The Echoes of Love, both because of how much I love that island, and because of the incredible history of its resistance. Not only was there an immensely brave local movement, agents of The Special Operations Executive were also highly active, sent over to Crete from Africa in much the same way as they were sent from Britain to France. Heavily disguised, endangering themselves every moment of every day, they lived among the Cretan people, carrying out a vast range of resistance activities, from organising parachute drops, to smuggling stranded soldiers off the island, to acts of sabotage, to infiltrating the Nazi offices, to dissemination of intelligence and anti-Nazi propaganda. I simply couldn’t read about the work of these SOE agents and their tremendous bravery, and not have Eleni be a part of it. I couldn’t resist the idea of a love story between a spy and her occupier.
The Echoes of Love is, at its heart, a story of courage, hope in the face of despair, and, more than anything, love, and its power to endure through the most devastating of circumstances. Writing it has been such an incredible experience, full of emotion and discovery – so much so that there are times when I could quite happily go back and write it all again. If you’ve already read it, I so hope you enjoyed it. If you decide to read it, I really do hope you enjoy it too. And I love nothing more than hearing from readers, so if you would like to get in touch to let me know your thoughts, it would be so wonderful to hear from you!
The Echoes of Love by Jenny Ashcroft is out now!
