Grandpa's wartime romance inspired Kirsty's debut novel
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A romantic chapter of family history has inspired a former Watten Primary School pupil to write her first book.
From The Wolf's Den is a novel written by Kirsty Campbell and set in Berlin 1938 where a six-year-old Jewish boy, Stefan Gundelach, is made homeless after SS officers destroy the orphanage he lived in during Kristallnacht.
He manages to escape Nazi Germany via the Kindertransport programme that saw many Jewish children evacuated to Britain.
Stefan is placed in a boarding school and the harsh realities of being a stranger in a foreign land become apparent – as do the horrors of war when the Nazis who drove him away threaten to destroy his life once again.
Kirsty (23) was born in Stirling and moved to Watten when she was seven. Although based in Aberdeen now, she still regards Caithness as her home.
The book was released earlier this year and has already been well received.
Kirsty said: "The inspiration for the book came from various places, but primarily from my family history.
"My grandfather, David Hunter Forsyth from Tillicoultry, was with British troops at the liberation of Neuengamme concentration camp in 1945.
"He met a German woman named Frieda Anna Maria Naths who was with her starving family nearby. My grandpa shot a deer for them to eat, they fell in love and eventually married in Scotland.
"They struggled to marry simply because Frieda was German, which was terrible. Unfortunately, Frieda died in 1961 from breast cancer, and my grandpa eventually remarried my granny. My grandpa passed away in 2005.
"I thought that this was the end of that story, but it wasn't. A few years ago, I was thrilled to finally make contact with some of Frieda’s relatives whose elder family members still remember my grandfather.
"Their story always get me emotional, and I wanted to convey that raw emotion through my novel.
"Second World War history has interested me since a young age, and when I delved into reading more about it online, I found out about something called the Kindertransport movement – it was something I wasn’t familiar with at all.
"Kindertransport was a rescue effort that took place during the nine months leading up to the outbreak of World War II. Over 10,000 mostly Jewish refugee children from the likes of Germany, Austria and Poland were sent to live in the UK.
"I was shocked that I hadn’t heard of such a significant movement so I chose for my main character, Stefan Gundelach, to go through the Kindertransport journey in the hope that other people who follow Stefan’s journey learn a little something about it. It's an important part of this country's history and it shouldn't be forgotten."
Kirsty admits that the journey to writing and releasing her debut novel hasn't been plain sailing but the end result is ample satisfaction for all her hard work.
She added: "The last couple of years haven't been particularly easy for me. I've been suffering with crippling anxiety and depression which has kept me out of work for a long time. I didn't want my issues to hold me back, but they did.
"When it came down to it, I wanted to do something productive with the time I had, and it came to me in the form of writing.
"I've always had a passion for films and television, and even attended college to study acting and performance, but I never thought that I would write a novel. Scripts maybe, yes, but not a novel. I always had this idea in my head of the story and I needed to put it down on paper, and that's really how the book came about!
"It took me around three years on and off to write. I wasn't writing full-time or anything, just when I felt inspired. It wasn't an easy process, though.The story came together well, but there were some parts where I struggled with the old writer's block.
"There was a period of around two to three months where one part of the story just wasn't coming together the way I wanted it to. It was incredibly frustrating. I cannot tell you how many parts of the book I scrapped in the early stages because I wasn't happy with it.
"There were days I would be on my laptop for 16 or 17 hours just reading chapters over or editing mistakes. Writing a book and doing everything else it entails is very exhausting, but in the end, it's totally worth it when you have your own copy in your hands."
