Monica Hesse: On Lesser-Known Historical Moments

Monica Hesse is the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in the Blue Coat, American Fire, The War Outside, and They Went Left, as well as a Pulitzer Prize finalist columnist at the Washington Post. She lives outside Washington, D.C., with her family. Monica invites you to visit her online at MonicaHesse.com and on Twitter @monicahesse.

Monica Hesse

Photo by Cassidy Duhon

In this interview, Monica discusses what inspired her new historical mystery, The Brightwood Code, her advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Monica Hesse
Literary agent: Ginger Clark
Book title: The Brightwood Code
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release date: May 14, 2024
Genre/category: Historical mystery
Previous titles: Girl in the Blue Coat; They Went Left; The War Outside; American Fire
Elevator pitch: Edda’s job as a WWI Hello Girl turned disastrous when she made a secret, deadly mistake while trying to connect a crucial telephone call. Now she’s back in America, working as a Bell operator, when a mysterious voice contacts her begging for help—and Edda realizes that the plea is tied to the wartime past she’s tried desperately to forget.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

I’m always interested in exploring massive historical events from the perspectives we never learned about in school. Hello Girls were the first American women to serve in an official wartime capacity—the Army needed bilingual telephone operators who could facilitate calls between European and American troops, and they ended up turning to young women who already spoke French and who could be trained to work the equipment. These women served on the front lines, in earshot of exploding bombs, but they were never officially enlisted as military, and it took decades for their contributions to be recognized.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

LOL. The idea actually began as a whole other book. I’d written a draft of a different novel, which I loved a lot—but I kept getting stuck on my main character’s backstory. It wasn’t going to make a huge appearance in the plot, but I needed to know her story for myself. At one point I thought, Hmmm, what if she was previously a Hello Girl? And then from that moment on, I didn’t want it to be a minor backstory, I wanted it to be a whole book.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

The whole history of telephone operators in the U.S. is completely fascinating. When The Brightwood Code takes place, this would have been a fairly new profession for young women—the first telephone operators in history were teenage boys, but they were eventually decided to be too squirrelly and unreliable. Telephone companies thought that women might be a better fit, but at the time the only respectable professions for young women were nurse, librarian, and teacher. So, companies like Bell waged a really intentional campaign to both recruit young women and also to convince their families that connecting telephone calls was a good job for nice girls. They required all of their new employees to remain single, and they put tea carts and pianos in the breakroom so that young women could carry on their classical music studies.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

Of all my books, The Brightwood Code is the most straight-up, page-turning mystery I’ve ever written. It’s set in the past, but the themes of young women trying to navigate a complicated world feel completely current.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Write.

It’s the most basic advice, but I can’t count the number of aspiring writers I’ve met who have been carrying around an idea for years and have never put anything to page. The only way to figure out whether you can do it is to do it—and remember, it doesn’t have to be good yet. You can make it good later, in the second or fourth draft. But the words on the page can’t be good if the words on the page don’t even exist.

With a growing catalog of instructional writing videos available instantly, we have writing instruction on everything from improving your craft to getting published and finding an audience. New videos are added every month!