October Novel Essential Information

 Novel Title: Inadvertently Entangled

Time Setting: 1943

Genre: Historical

Minimum Word Goal: 90,000

Timespan: October–November

Locations: Kraków, Nazi-occupied Poland; Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary

Main Characters: Pierson Edwards

Background Information: 

Born the only son and oldest of two children to his parents, Pierson is the middle of five children his father has through three marriages, and the first of three children his mother has through two marriages.

His parents divorced when he was six because his mother had discovered his father was having an affair with the woman who is now Pierson’s stepmother, and Pierson spent his early childhood with his mother before choosing to live with his father as a teenager.

This led to Pierson’s spending more time with his paternal family, which includes his great uncle, who is known even to him, his cousins, the children of his older cousins, as Uncle Ashford, who is his grandmum’s sister.

Uncle Ashford and Pierson’s grandmum were born in England, with his grandmum having met his grandfather owing to his grandfather having been a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII, following which they were married and emigrated to his grandfather’s home province of British Columbia.

Since Uncle Ashford and Pierson’s grandmum, as well as their mother, were the only members of the family who survived the war, Uncle Ashford and Pierson’s great-grandmum — who died before he was born — emigrated to Canada in the 1950s to be closer to family.

Having never married, Uncle Ashford nonetheless delighted in his nieces, nephews, and subsequent generations, and often regaled them with stories of his war experiences, which included being in MI6.

Pierson, as those before him, found the stories entertaining, but as he got older he began to question if things were quite as cut and dried as Uncle Ashford — and his grandfather, who also shared stories of being in the RCAF — had always said they were.

He isn’t completely a Holocaust denier, but he does question whether some of the atrocities Uncle Ashford attested as being part of the Holocaust really happened, and particularly to the degree Uncle Ashford claims they did, and he also questions how many Nazis were actually complicit in the operation.

As a result, in Uncle Ashford’s later years, Pierson got into some discussions with him that turned into arguments in which neither he nor Uncle Ashford gave any quarter, and Uncle Ashford died at the age of 101 without Pierson having convinced him to soften his line or his having convinced Pierson to harden his.

Thankfully, since Uncle Ashford’s death — followed shortly by that of Pierson’s grandfather — the evils of the Nazi and the Holocaust have faded from family conversation, to the point that Pierson has effectively forgotten about them.

Pronunciations:

Kraków: krohkoof

Budapest: buhdahpehsht