Titusville author Caroline Seebohm delves into World War I and how it affects the relationship between twins in her second novel.
By: Susan Van Dongen
(CAROLINE SEEBOHM)
The war in Iraq had yet to begin when Caroline Seebohm started to write her latest novel, The Innocents (Algonquin, $23.95). But the war went full swing as she was crafting the story of twin sisters who serve as nurses on the battlefront in France during World War I. The characters Dorothea and Iris Crosby, coming from New York’s high society, are shocked to see the horrors of war firsthand. Jolted from their complacency, the experience in Europe changes their lives forever and they are quite different people when they return to their family.
The author reflects that the young men and women returning from Iraq to the United States are also not the same perhaps they never will be.
"The Iraq war was escalating as I was writing," Ms. Seebohm says. "I was reading the stories about the men and women who had become mentally unhinged by the war and I saw the parallels with my own story. It took on an extra poignancy, (thinking about) what the twins suffered and what the soldiers are suffering now. It’s that same feeling of a new reality that can’t be lived with comfortably."
Born and raised in England and now living in Titusville, like many Brits Ms. Seebohm has always had a fascination with World War I. It seemed like a whole generation of young men was wiped out in the war, including promising young poets such as Wilfred Owen.
"To the British, World War I has always been a painful and romantic war because so many men died and so much great poetry came out of it," she says. "I had a great uncle killed in the war, so it’s always been a haunting period for me. Wave after wave of 18-year-old boys sent into battle to be mowed down, almost like feeding the enemy. It was a brutal, mindless war so many deaths for no reason.
"What’s different about my book is that, while most World War I books focus on the British and the upper class families that lost people, mine is about American girls who volunteer," she adds. "And there were many great young Americans who fought and died, the Brits just tend to get more attention because of their literary tendencies."
Tragedy first touches the lives of the Crosby sisters when they learn of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in March of 1911. For the first time in their lives, they’re given a reason to become involved in something outside their realm of comfort. When World War I begins in Europe, they are among the first to volunteer as Red Cross nurses.
As identical twins, they seem to function as one, empathizing deeply with each other. This closeness is threatened when an American soldier falls in love with one of them.
"One of the twins is in love and the other one can’t go there with her," Ms. Seebohm says. "It causes a rift between the two girls. I’ve learned through research that the closeness of twins can be threatened when one does or feels something the other can’t share. I spoke to a lot of people who were twins, describing how they felt abandoned because her sibling had fallen in love. Of course, you can’t stop such a wonderful thing from happening. But in my experience, the closeness of the twins comes before closeness between a husband and wife. It’s a very complicated relationship."
The tale of the Crosby sisters has its seed in a true story, about an actual set of twins Ms. Seebohm went to school with.
"It was exciting to work out how they would experience the war," she says. "I was also interested in how they understood each other because they were so closely connected. (With my friends from school) I noticed there was a surreal connection. They often knew what the other one was going to say."
The author of a novel and three biographies including The Man Who Was Vogue: The Life and Times of Conde Nast (Viking Press, 1982) Ms. Seebohm has also written extensively on design, architecture and travel for The Wall Street Journal, Town & Country, Travel + Leisure and House & Garden. She’s about to see the publication of Cottages and Mansions of the Jersey Shore (Rutgers University Press, $39.95), an illustrated book with photographs by Peter C. Cook, and a sequel to Great Houses and Gardens of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press, 2005).
To bring a deeper sense of the war to The Innocents, Ms. Seebohm read copiously, studied historic maps and traveled to battlefields, museums and memorials in France.
"There are also cemeteries that you wouldn’t believe, that stretch as far as the eye can see across the plains of northern France," she says. "I got so interested that I’m going this summer to visit the Somme, one of the most famous World War I battlefields, where hundreds of thousands of lives were lost."
(In fact, more than a million lives were lost in the battle, which was fought in the summer and autumn of 1916.)
What historians have noted about World War I is the way that the war straddled two very different time periods. Even in technology, the war was a contradiction troops utilized everything from horses and mules to machine guns. It was the introduction to horrific new ways of killing, including chemical warfare, that shocked the world and created a great loss of innocence.
"The generals had no connection with the men on the battlefield," Ms. Seebohm says. "People didn’t realize how warfare would affect the soldiers afterward. Now we know (the after effects) too well, from Vietnam to Iraq. These very young people haven’t had any life to live, then they come home afterwards and find it hard to make a new life for themselves.
"In the book, the twins led incredibly privileged lives," she continues. "But when they’ve had such an overwhelming experience (as being in a war), they discover that going back to this life is impossible. When you’ve seen what they’ve seen, you can’t go back to having martinis and lunch with friends."
The Innocents by Caroline Seebohm is available in bookstores and online.

