Heidi Diehl

Heidi Diehl is the author of Lifelines.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Lifelines, and for your character Louise?

A: Initially, I wanted to write about a time and place that fascinated me: 1970s West Germany, a time of huge social change. The decades immediately after World War II were marked by Germany’s collective silence about its crimes in the Holocaust; as the postwar generation came of age in the ‘60s and ‘70s, young people demanded public reckoning and remorse.

I was interested in personal experiences of this public shift, and I was particularly inspired by the intersection of art and politics in the early ‘70s—the ways that, for young German artists and musicians, creative experimentation intertwined with the broader cultural changes. This time period struck me as exciting, but also emotionally challenging and psychologically complex—rich material for a novel and its characters.

Louise is the novel’s protagonist, and her character developed slowly, as I explored both her creative work and her personal history. Her vantage point, as an American in Germany, offered...[read on]

Visit Heidi Diehl's website.

--Marshal Zeringue