In One Wartime Moment, A Family Is Forever Changed

By Frank Stasio

Published October 19, 2018 at 12:18 PM EDT

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Abigail DeWitt's novel "News of Our Loved Ones" is a story of a French family torn apart by the events of D-Day. It is fiction with roots in her own family's experiences of the war.

Courtesy of Abigail DeWitt

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Abigail DeWitt's mother's family, in France before the Liberation

Courtesy of Abigail DeWitt

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The author's grandmother, who perished during the bombing on D-Day, and her husband

Courtesy of Abigail DeWitt

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Abigail DeWitt's mother survived the war due to a fluke of scheduling that had her away in Paris duringn D-Day.

Courtesy of Abigail DeWitt

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Caen, after the bombs fell on Normandy during D-Day.

Courtesy of Abigail DeWitt

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Abigail DeWitt's aunt was killed when a bomb hit the family home in Normandy during D-Day.

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After surviving the war and moving to the U.S., Abigail DeWitt's mother became a renknowned theoretical physicist.

Courtesy of Abigail DeWitt

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Author Abigail DeWitt also teaches writing in Western North Carolina.

Courtesy of Abigail DeWitt

In occupied France, one sister travels to Paris to audition for a spot at a conservatory, while two others stay behind at the family home in Normandy. The D-Day invasion that leaves one of them dead and the others traumatized in their various ways shapes the entire family for multiple generations and across two continents.

The tale unfolds in Abigail DeWitt’s new novel, “News of Our Loved Ones” (Harper Collins/2018). The book uses shifting perspectives to bring the reader into the minds and personal thoughts of the characters involved, weaving an intimate, civilian and female-focused view of World War II.

Host Frank Stasio talks with author Abigail DeWitt about the novel, and how it mirrors her own family’s history. Abigail Dewitt reads from her book at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh on Oct. 19 at 7 p.m., and at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill on Nov. 6.