Daughter Returns to Germany to Finish Her Father's WWII Story
Stories have a tendency to consume their authors, taking on a life of their own as they are researched, written and rewritten. Marilyn Jeffers Walton knows this truth all too well. What started as an account of her father’s WWII experience written primarily for immediate family became Rhapsody in Junk: A Daughter’s Return to Germany to Finish Her Father’s Story, a book-length historical account of the war, with an international appeal.
Walton, a graduate of Ohio State University, had always been interested in history, especially the stories behind WWII. “It was intuitively appealing to me, as my father was one of the men who served during the war,” says Walton. Initially, her father wanted to trace the men he had served with and find how they fared after the war. Also, in particular, he wanted to find out how his top-turret gunner died on the ground that fateful day the crew was shot down. When her father became too frail to continue his quest, the torch was officially passed from father to daughter. With a background in writing and editing, Walton was ready to take on the project.
Walton began by researching the archives for her father’s WWII experience. “One of my goals was to replicate my dad’s last mission. I wanted to research his original route, from the egress of the B-24, Rhapsody in Junk, in England to the location where the crew was shot down and then where the plane eventually crashed in Germany,” says Walton.
European Odyssey: Following in Her Father's Footsteps
Eventually, she found the woman who had watched her father bail out of the crippled B-24, and she saw the farm field where he landed. Later, with the help of a hand-drawn map from an archive file, she found the German cemetery where the top-turret gunner had been temporarily buried. “My father had told me the story of how the crew had to leave their gunner there, and I actually stood at the grave where the crew had left the wooden box containing their gunner’s remains sixty years before,” remembers Walton.
While she had heard of the Bataan Death March of WWII in the Philippines, she learned that her father was part of another less-publicized but equally infamous march through Germany. To fully understand what her father had experienced, Walton visited the interrogation center in Bavaria where her father was first taken. Then she decided to follow the exact route of the evacuation march from what was left of the prisoner-of-war camp, Stalag Luft
Once she had contacted international researchers and reunited the remaining members of her father’s crew whom she had located, Walton began to understand that she had something more than a family history on her hands. “I quickly realized other people wanted to read this story, learn how to find their own fathers’ stories, or as living participants of the war, tell their own stories. After I had met so many people in Germany, I wanted to emphasize the human misery that ensued for everyone who was caught up in the madness of WWII. The book became a tapestry, and by combining the varied colors and threads, I began to see more accurately and vividly the human cost of the war.” After three years of extensive archived research and writing, Walton was ready to complete her labor of love.
Finding the Right Publisher: Editorial Control and Cover Design
When it came time to publish the work, Walton benefited from extensive background knowledge in publishing. When her children were younger, she wrote and published a series of children’s books that sold more than 40,000 copies. One book, Chameleons’ Rainbow, won a Children’s Choice award in 1986. Walton began to shop the manuscript for Rhapsody in Junk to a large New York house with a line of military books. After some initial interest, a number of factors led to Walton’s decision to self-publish the book. One of her chief concerns was time to market. “I didn’t have the luxury of time to take up to two years to complete a book of this size and complexity. It’s hard to explain how slowly the wheels of traditional publishers can turn,” says Walton, “especially to elderly veterans profiled in the book who were anxious to read it.”
With the personal details of her family woven throughout the story, Walton was reluctant to give up any editorial control over the content. “I have enjoyed good relationships with editors, but there are a few I didn’t really mesh with. An editor who is not literally or figuratively on the same page as the writer can morph a book into something unrecognizable. I needed 100 percent control of content and design and image placement. Fitting all those pieces together was difficult, but an editor would have slowed the process even more,” she says.
It was also important to Walton to control the layout and design of the book’s cover. “With my previous six books, the cover design was out of my hands. I never saw the covers on my other books until the books arrived at my house in a box. The AuthorHouse cover designers are extremely good at what they do, and they followed my wishes,” says Walton.
Once Walton nailed down the cover design and layout of the book, she focused on her promotional efforts. “You really have to be proactive to make things happen in your life, and writing and selling your book is no exception. I knew that writing is just the first part of the equation,” says Walton. She distributed press releases to targeted media outlets, and was interviewed by radio and newspaper outlets. The local paper where her parents had lived after the war, the Springfield News-Sun, published a three-part series on her story (part 1, part 2, part 3).
Walton recommends that authors “fish where the fish are” when holding events to promote their book. “Since my book is about WWII, I went to 8th Air Force Historical Society events and WWII prisoner-of-war reunions, as well as retirement communities, VFW groups and local book signings. Pick and choose your targets; don’t waste your time going outside of your target audience,” says Walton.
As she continues to promote Rhapsody in Junk, Walton has found time to work on the manuscript for a second book focused on police K-9s, entitled Badge on My Collar. Walton’s passion for reading and writing sustains her writing projects, and she insists that is the key for successful authors. “Believe in your ability and be passionate about your work. That passion will shine through in your book,” says Walton. Passion certainly shines through in Walton’s work, and AuthorHouse is proud to continue to assist passionate authors in achieving their publishing goals.
