UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH
Laurel Corona, Author

Q: HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA FOR THIS BOOK?

A: I didn’t! Michael Bart had already been researching his parents and their involvement with the partisans of Vilna for more than seven years when he first told me about his interest in publishing a book about the subject.

Q: WAS MICHAEL BART A FRIEND OF YOURS?

A: No, and the way we met is kind of a funny story. The rabbi at the synagogue I was attending knew about the books I had written on Jewish subjects, and he asked if I could guest lecture at his Basic Judaism class because his son was briefly in town and he wanted to spend time with him. As it turns out, Mike and Bonnie Bart were taking the class. Afterwards they came up and told me they liked my lecture and had a project they’d like to discuss with me. They said they had a great idea for a book, but had been wondering how one went about finding a writer, and there I was. They invited me to lunch a few weeks later to talk about it.

Q: DID YOU DECIDE RIGHT AWAY TO WRITE THE BOOK?

A: Actually, no. I told them I needed some time—a couple of months it turned out-- to think about it. It wasn’t an easy decision to make.

Q: WHY NOT? IT'S A GREAT STORY, AND THE JEWISH RESISTANCE ISN'T SOMETHING THAT'S BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT A LOT.

A: Yes, and yes. I had never written a book on spec before, never written in partnership with anyone, never written a book of this length, and never written for adults. To be honest, I was quite intimidated. And I have to admit I was concerned about spending the next year of my life (actually it ended up being closer to three years) immersed in such a painful subject.

Q: WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY NO?

A: I have a very good friend I confided my misgivings to. I remember telling her the main reason I was probably going to say no was because I was scared. She has this way of looking at you when your answer is just not acceptable, and she was giving me that look. I had the flash of insight right then that being afraid was a better reason to do it than not to do it. I didn’t want to go through life knowing something like this had defeated me without even having tried.

Q: IT WASN'T THE SUBJECT MATTER THAT MADE YOU SAY YES?

A: Actually, after I got over the worst of my self-doubt, I decided I very much wanted to write the book. I guess you could say I went from one extreme to the other. Not only is the story so important and compelling, but I also decided I should have the courage at least to write about something others had been forced to endure. There was something kind of disgusting about saying I couldn’t handle exploring--even from the comfort of my own desk chair in the safety of my own home--the experiences Michael’s parents, and millions of others, had to go through.

Q: THE BOOK IS OBVIOUSLY MUCH BROADER IN SCOPE THAN MICHAEL'S PARENTS' STORY. HOW DID YOU RESEARCH ALL THE BACKGROUND MATERIAL YOU INCLUDE IN UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH?

A: I was lucky in that Michael had spent so much time researching the topic already, so by the time I came on the scene, he already had a good sense for what sources were likely to be the most useful. He gave me a large pile of books and a file case full of materials, and whenever he found anything new he gave me a copy. So that saved me a lot of time, although in the end, it all had to go into my head before I could write.

Q: BETWEEN MICHAEL'S STORIES AND THE MATERIALS YOU STUDIED, DID YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEEDED?

A: I told Michael a few months into the project that I thought I needed to go to Vilna to get a more vivid sense for what the city and its surroundings were like. He and his wife, Bonnie, liked the idea of the three of us going together, so that’s what we did. Elsewhere on this site, I've posted a condensed and edited version of the journal I kept during the trip.

We found the house where his mother lived before the war, and the family store a few blocks away. We had a guide, Regina Kopilevich, who showed us everything that remained of the ghetto, and helped us track down sites associated with his parents’ lives, like the Avengers’ headquarters, the Cheap Houses, and the ghetto police barracks. Regina and former partisan Fania Jocheles-Brankovski also took us to the Avengers camp in the Rudnicki forest as well as to Ponary, where many of Vilna’s Jews were murdered. That’s just a little bit of what we experienced on what for all of us was a very intense and overwhelming trip. Perhaps I could have written the book without this trip, but it wouldn’t be nearly as vivid or accurate, or as deeply felt.

Q: WHAT WAS IT LIKE WRITING THE BOOK?

A: Hard! That’s the first word that comes to mind. Writing is always hard. This book had a couple of additional challenges for me, though. The first was that it meant so much to someone else. It wasn’t just “my thing” to handle as I pleased. I was always aware of how much Michael had invested in the outcome and at those times when the process seemed endless and possibly fruitless, I would remind myself that if I gave up, UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH would remain unfinished, unpolished, and unpublished, and Michael would have nothing concrete to show for all his research effort.

The second challenge was that as we progressed we both became increasingly aware that anyone who wants to write with integrity about the Holocaust has a huge responsibility to do a good job. "Good" in this situation means being careful to stick with the facts, and controlling the urge to embellish or speculate. Not exaggerating, and sticking with what can be documented, is the best possible defense against the people who deny the truth about the Holocaust.

Q: WERE YOU RIGHT ABOUT HOW DIFFICULT IT WOULD BE TO SPEND SO MUCH TIME IMMERSED IN STUDY AND WRITING ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST?

A: At times, yes. I think I wrote much of the book in a state of shock. When I would start feeling overwhelmed or despondent, I would tell myself I had a job to do. My job was to explain and describe so that readers would understand. My job was to teach. I would think about what needed to be written and ask myself how I could convey it. That gave me the intellectual distance not to be overpowered by emotion and unable to write. Writing requires detachment, to be able to say things like, “Is this exactly the right word?” or, “Could this point be made more effectively with a sentence structured this way?” If you’re imploding you can’t do any of these things.

Q: DID ANY PART OF THE BOOK GIVE YOU MORE DIFFICULTY THAN OTHERS?

A: One of the hardest parts of the book was writing the preface in Michael's voice. It is important that readers know about his efforts to find out about his parents. The preface had to be in the first person to be effective, and we decided the best course of action was for me to write it myself, but in a way that spoke for him. He made some notes and an audiotape for me, and we talked almost every day while I was writing it.

I had extensive experience with many different kinds of writing, but none with ghostwriting. It took a while to suppress my own voice enough to speak for Michael, and I am pleased I was able to do it to his satisfaction.

Q: HOW DID THE DIVISION OF LABOR BETWEEN YOU AND MICHAEL BART WORK?

A: Writers pretty much need to be left alone, but fortunately Michael was fine with that. We agreed that our division of labor would be that I do all the writing and he and Bonnie would take care of everything else so I could focus only on that.

Anything that needed to be written, I wrote. That was my end of it, starting with query letters all the way through revisions of revisions of drafts. For several years I worked pretty consistently on the book, sometimes for long, intense periods, when I was drafting or doing heavy duty revisions, and other times spending a day or two incorporating new information from Michael, as well as suggestions from my agent at the time, the St. Martin's editor, and other readers of the manuscript.

Q: WHAT DID "EVERYTHING ELSE" CONSIST OF?

A: Michael was, and still is, constantly and tirelessly on the move, from long before I met him to way after the last details of the manuscript were in place. My job was clearly defined, but the non-writing aspects of the project expanded far beyond what I could have imagined. As I mentioned earlier, he had already been developing contacts and doing research for seven years when I met him.

While I was in the early stages of writing, “everything else” included putting together lists of possible editors and agents and sending out mountains of query letters, copies of the book proposal, and other such things. He and Bonnie took care of photocopying and mailing, keeping master lists of contacts, etc., collecting up family photographs and a lot of other very time-consuming things. Everything that could be a distraction or unnecessary use of my time they took care of, which I very much appreciated. He also made all the arrangements for our trip to Vilnius, which was quite an undertaking.

As for editing, whenever we were preparing to send the manuscript out, I would give Michael and Bonnie my most up-to-date version—I was constantly tweaking it-- and they would go through it to ensure the facts were correct, and to find as many typos and minor glitches as they could. Bonnie in particular had an eagle eye for those kinds of details. Not even an extra space between words got by her! They let me know about any changes they thought were needed, and I adjusted the manuscript to reflect their observations.

There also was a lot of work involved in getting copyright releases and captioning photographs. Bonnie, to the best of my knowledge, did all of this work.

Q: HOW DO YOU SEE YOUR ROLE IN PROMOTING THE BOOK NOW THAT IT IS PUBLISHED?

A: I think both of us will be able to give outstanding presentations in different but complementary roles.

Michael's perspectives are likely to be of particular interest to audiences who want to learn more about Leizer and Zenia Bart's story, Michael's research efforts, and his experiences as a member of the second generation. He also is very knowledgeable about the Jewish resistance and Vilna's Jewish history.

My presentations about UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH are, and will continue to be, focused on things its author* can speak to. My audiences will be found primarily among those who attend writing conferences, book fairs and festivals, writers' workshops and classes, and book clubs where the writing process is of prime interest.

UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH has been consistently praised for the quality of the writing. I have been very pleased by critics' comments as to how well I laid out the broader issues and challenges faced by Jews during the Nazi occupation, and interwove Michael's parents' story into a much broader historical narrative. These are among the many writing-related matters I can discuss with interested audiences. I am already on the faculty of a number of conferences in 2008 (details are on my "Events" page) and I expect that to continue in 2009 and beyond.

I enjoy reading anything aloud, and reading my own work is particularly meaningful for me. Writers have a unique history inside their heads. I remember whether I struggled with a particular sentence or paragraph,or if it’s one of those things that just flowed, as if it had been out there somewhere waiting for me. I remember whispering passages aloud in front of my computer monitor, because how something sounds is a big factor in how it reads.

When audiences hear an author read, they are witnessing more than a voice saying the words on the page. At my last reading, someone in the audience particularly liked one of my descriptions and asked me where it came from. I knew what she meant, and I could at least try to respond. The marvelous thing about writing is that authors start with nothing and end up with something, and I know I always like hearing them speak about how that happened. Presumably many readers of UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH will feel the same way.

Q: WHAT'S NEXT IN TERMS OF YOUR WRITING?

A: I don’t have any plans at this time to write any more book-length nonfiction. I have a novel coming out from VOICE, which is an imprint of Hyperion Books, in November 2008, and another being marketed presently by my agent, Meg Ruley, of Jane Rotrosen and Associates. I am beginning research for a third novel, and the level of learning and creative excitement in the initial stages of a book tends to make me set an unsustainable pace for myself, so I am trying to avoid that this time around. A little time to work on my tennis serve sounds pretty good to me right now!

[rev. June 2008]

*Promotional references by St Martin's Press to Michael Bart as "the author" acknowledge his years of research and his many intangible contributions to the project. This has caused the misunderstanding on the part of some reviewers, readers, and others that Michael wrote or co-wrote UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH, since in common usage, the words "author" and "writer" are more or less interchangeable. I am the sole author of the book in the usual meaning of the word.