LEC and The Pilot’s Wife

If you follow my terribly irregular blog posts, you’ll know that Cognac’s European literature festival (LEC) celebrates literature from a different country each year. Last year we were spoilt rotten with Ireland.

Which European country do you think 2025 will feature?

Here are some clues: mountains, cheese, chocolates, army knives, banking and watches… Have you guessed?

On the subject of Swiss watches, I recently read a brilliant historical novel that gave me a fascinating insight into Switzerland’s rôle during World War II: The Pilot’s Wife by Cynthia Anderson, published by Embla Books.

I’d like to share the secrets of this novel with you today. To begin with, here are the cover and description.

Three generations of women. One dark family secret. A truth that time never forgot .

1944, Europe. Nineteen-year-old Hedy can’t bear her country’s neutrality in the face of the ultimate evil. This is not the Switzerland she loves, and she cannot stand by any longer.

Undeterred by the risk of German patrols, she starts helping to smuggle lost Allied soldiers through the forest to safety across Lake Geneva. Finally, Hedy feels she is doing something worthwhile.

Then one night she stumbles across a wounded American airman. Second Lieutenant Samuel Reardon was dropping supplies to the French resistance when his plane crashed. Despite the grave danger it will bring to her family, Hedy can’t leave Samuel injured and alone, so she hides him in her father’s mountain hut.

As Hedy and Samuel grow closer, the dangers of their resistance work become ever more deadly, and soon the pair will be faced with the ultimate choice that will tear them apart . . .

2018, America. Nineteen-year-old Gina looks at her grandmother’s hands that tell the story of her whole life and wonders how much time they have left together. Since her mother died, Mamie Hedy is all Gina has left. But then her grandmother reveals a shocking secret that takes them back to her home in the Swiss mountains for the last time.

After all these years, can Gina and her grandmother find the key to unlock the secrets of their shared past?

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If you think that sounds interesting, wait until you see what’s coming next!

I liked the book so much that I contacted Cynthia and she agreed to tell me more about her experience of life in Switzerland and how she came to write her book.

So without further ado, here is our interview.

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Firstly, Cynthia, what inspired you to write The Pilot’s Wife?

Hi Harriet and thanks for inviting me on your blog.

I was inspired to write The Pilot’s Wife after visiting a watch museum in Le Brassus, a Swiss village on the border with France. It was the first time I’d seen the inside of a mechanical watch, and the beauty, precision and order of the parts struck me as a good metaphor for Switzerland. During World War II, the forest behind Le Brassus served as a route for smuggling information and people out of Europe, and many Swiss individuals risked their lives to do so. Curious about the people who opposed neutrality to help bring the war to an end, I wanted to write about them and this period in Swiss history.

I’m so glad you did. Can you tell us where the novel is set and suggest some places to visit?

It’s primarily set in Le Brassus, a village in the Vallée de Joux, Canton of Vaud. From the 16th century, Le Brassus was known for its ironworks with natural ore deposits. In the late 18th century, metalwork transitioned to horology. During long winters—some of the coldest temperatures in the country are recorded in Le Brassus—dairy farmers, isolated by heavy snow, made watch parts in their houses. In the spring, they would bring these components to sell to watchmakers in Geneva. This laid the foundation for the Vallée de Joux’s reputation as a center for precision watchmaking.

Since The Pilot’s Wife is a dual timeline, switching back and forth between the present and the 1940s, a scene occurs in the Audemars Piguet Museum in Le Brassus, where the company was founded in 1875. The Museum, in the shape of a stunning glass spiral reflecting the movements inside a watch, is a wonderful place to visit and learn about horology.

The Risoud Forest, just behind Le Brassus, is a popular destination for hiking, mountain biking, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing. Stretching 15 kilometers, it’s the largest contiguous forest in Europe, half in Switzerland and half in France. The forest has massive spruce trees and is dotted with old woodcutters’ huts that serve as rustic shelters. 

Other places to visit include Lausanne, the capital of the Canton of Vaud, and especially La Cité—the medieval part of Lausanne where the cathedral is located and overlooking the city and Lac Leman. A scene also takes place in Berne, the Old City (Altstadt), where more than 100 public fountains dating back to the 16th century are adorned with colorful statues representing historical and symbolic figures.

It sounds wonderful. How did you do the research?

I started with visits to Le Brassus, wandering around the town and through the Risoud Forest, trying to get a feel for the place and whether there was a story worth telling. I didn’t discover the connection with World War II until I came across an engraved plaque on the wall of the Protestant Church: 1939-1945, Despite Our Infidelities, God with His Almighty Hand, Protected our Country, To Him Alone the Glory. What infidelities, I wondered, and was there something specific that occurred in Le Brassus during the war?

I did research at the U.S. National Archives, and that’s where I learned, from declassified escape and evasion reports, the most surprising thing about Switzerland during the war—as a part of their policy of armed neutrality, they interned Allied pilots. I read Cathryn J. Prince’s Shot from the Sky: American POWs in Switzerland, a rigorously researched account of the American aircraft, sometimes shot down over the country or damaged planes returning from bombing campaigns in Germany seeking a safe landing whose airmen were then held in Swiss internment camps unable to leave until the war ended.

Fascinating! How long have you been in Switzerland?

I moved here in 2007. I’d been living in London with my French husband and two young sons for nine years, and we wanted a more immersive French-speaking environment for our family, so we jumped at a job opportunity my husband received in Switzerland. I live in the Canton of Vaud, just outside of Geneva.

What do you like most about Swiss life?

Switzerland is a fascinating and beautiful country to live in. Public transportation is well organized, and almost every mountain village is connected by train. I also appreciate the political system that decentralizes and shares power with regions. The right to a referendum exists as an essential check on government power, giving people a voice in all sorts of laws, from transport to health. Curiously, from 1939 to 1949, the Swiss parliament granted the government full powers under emergency law allowing the executive to rule without parliamentary consent and suspending the right for citizens to challenge laws via referendum. I often wonder if neutrality and the policies it engendered would have been more widely debated and questioned under the pressure of a referendum. This makes the bravery of Swiss individuals working in resistance even more remarkable.

Yes, their courage really comes through in The Pilot’s Wife. What are you working on now?

I’m writing another World War II story set in France and Germany, about women from many European countries sent to work in Germany.

I’ll look forward to reading that too. Good luck with your research and thank you for answering my questions.

Thank you for having me.

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I hope you enjoyed Cynthia’s comments and can support her – and learn more about Switzerland – by buying her book here.

I’ll be back soon to reveal this year’s poster and tell you about the authors who’ll be present at the LEC festival and the books that have been chosen for the Readers’ Prize (Prix des Lecteurs).

Happy reading.

Cynthia Anderson was born in California and has degrees from the University of Colorado and the London School of Economics. 

The Pilot’s Wife won a Bronze Medal in the 2024 Historical Novel Society First Chapters Competition. She is based in Switzerland with her husband and their labrador.