Linda Joy Myers has always been haunted by the power of the past to affect people in the stream of time. She learned about World War II through her grandmother, a passionate Anglophile who would rhapsodize about the unfairness of war. Together they watched black and white documentaries about the war when Linda Joy was young which led to a passion about history which she integrated into her own struggles with intergenerational trauma and her work as a therapist and a writer.
As founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers, Linda Joy is the author of four books on memoir writing. The Power of Memoir and Journey of Memoir help writers find their way to their healing stories. Her two memoirs Don’t Call Me Mother, and Song of the Plains have won the Bay Area Publishing Association Gold Medal award and the 2018 Next Generation Indie Book awards.
The search for layers of truth to help inform current generations about WWII led Linda Joy to explore the mostly unknown history of Vichy France in the weeks following the fall of France. Her new book is inspired by Varian Fry’s memoir Surrender on Demand and Donald Caskie’s The Tartan Pimpernel, and by the daunting courage of unknown and unnamed people who helped to save the lives of thousands of refugees, British soldiers, and other lost souls during the chaotic war in France. Memoirs were the most helpful books to find the “inside” secret stories.
Linda Joy loves to travel, tends her rose bushes and her two kitties, Harvey, a Maine coon, and Charlie, a Norwegian forest cat. They sit on her desk and dangle their paws over the keys.
To learn about The Forger of Marseille and what inspired it: https://theforgerofmarseille.com.
Linda Joy’s memoir links: www.namw.org and www.writeyourmemoirinsixmonths.com.