It happens that a story slips into your depths, shaking you violently and challenging you to turn away from it. This is exactly what happened to me with the story of the Nightingale. The truth is,¹ I did everything in my power not to write this novel, yet my research into World War II led me to the tale of the young woman who forged an escape route from occupied France, and I couldn't break free from it. Thus, her story became the starting point, and in reality, it is a story of heroism, risk, and untamed courage. I couldn't distract myself from it; I kept digging, exploring, and reading, until this story led me to other stories no less astonishing. It was impossible to ignore those stories. So I found myself under the weight of a single question that dwelled within me, a question that remains today as it was seventy years ago: Under what circumstances would I risk my life as a wife and mother? And more importantly, under what circumstances would I risk my child's life to save a stranger?

This question occupies a central place in the novel The Nightingale. For in love, we discover who we want to be; but in war, we discover who we are. And perhaps sometimes we don't want to know what we are capable of doing to survive.

In war, women's stories have always been prone to neglect and oblivion. Women usually return from the battlefields to their homes and say nothing, then carry on with their lives. The Nightingale, then, is a novel about those women, and the bold choices they made to save their children and preserve the way of life they were accustomed to.