Acclaimed author Alice Hoff­man has writ­ten over thir­ty works of fic­tion for read­ers of all ages. Now, in her mid­dle-grade nov­el When We Flew Away: A Nov­el of Anne Frank Before the Diary, she brings her immense tal­ent to reimag­in­ing the life of Anne Frank in those pre­cious years before the fam­i­ly went into hiding.

The lyri­cal, fairy-tale-esque prose in When We Flew Away immers­es us in Anne’s dreams for the future, her rela­tion­ship with her old­er sis­ter, and her desire to be under­stood. This com­ing-of-age sto­ry is per­haps more pow­er­ful because the read­er knows the trag­ic end­ing that looms, and yet still feels the hope and courage that pro­pel Anne and her fam­i­ly as the Nazi regime tight­ens its hold on Ams­ter­dam between 1940 and 1942. 

Simona Zaret­sky: I want to start off by ask­ing about the expe­ri­ence of tak­ing such an impor­tant and icon­ic sto­ry and fic­tion­al­iz­ing it. I know The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank was also huge­ly influ­en­tial to you as a young read­er. And what was the research process like?

Alice Hoff­man: Scholas­tic approached me with the idea — which has nev­er hap­pened to me before — and before I could even think about what it would mean in terms of research, or the dif­fi­cul­ty of imag­in­ing Anne’s sto­ry, I said yes, right away. I felt it was meant to be, like a full-cir­cle moment; Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl was one of the rea­sons I became a writer. This project came to me toward the end of my career. I felt like it was the book that my grand­moth­er would want me to write more than any oth­er book. So, I did­n’t even think about the chal­lenges. I did­n’t think — I just said yes.

The Straus fam­i­ly archives were very help­ful to me, as was Joan Adler at the Straus His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety. I rent a lit­tle cot­tage to work in and, strange­ly enough, it turns out that it’s owned by a mem­ber of the Straus fam­i­ly. It was through him that I was able to gain access to the archives at the Straus His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety. I wrote a big part of the book in this lit­tle cot­tage he owns. The odds of that hap­pen­ing just seemed super slim.

SZ: Oh, that’s won­der­ful. The sto­ry is framed by haunt­ing fairy­tale-style para­graphs under the head­ing ​“What We Lost,” and then parts one through five, which focus on Mar­got and Anne. Could you speak about the fram­ing of the larg­er sto­ries through these fairy tales? I was also curi­ous about the role that jus­tice and fair­ness play, because I think fairy tales often have their own rules.

AH: That’s actu­al­ly a great ques­tion, because I had a lot of dif­fi­cul­ty when I start­ed think­ing about how I should tell this sto­ry. I did­n’t want to reread the diary because I was imag­in­ing a piece of Anne’s life from before it, so I did­n’t want to have in mind what hap­pened after my sto­ry was told. The things that hap­pen are so hor­rif­ic and unbe­liev­able that I thought the only way to tell this sto­ry would be as if it were a fairy tale, or a myth. To me, that’s the pur­pose of fairy tales: to tell you about all the ter­ri­ble things that are out there and all the ways you can have the courage to face them. As a kid read­ing fairy tales, I felt that they had a deep psy­cho­log­i­cal truth that’s lack­ing in oth­er children’s books. They depict cru­el­ty, but also hope.

SZ: In that vein, I was struck by the black moths that creep in Anne’s periph­ery, mul­ti­ply­ing and tap­ping away. I thought that real­ly par­al­leled the restric­tion of rights and human­i­ty that’s hap­pen­ing in Anne’s world dur­ing this time. And it’s only Anne who can see them at first.

AH: It’s fun­ny, because when you’re writ­ing fic­tion, you don’t think about sym­bol­ism. It kind of aris­es as you’re writ­ing. I went on a trip and there were huge black moths, one of which lin­gered out­side my door. What is this black moth doing? I won­dered. When I asked the peo­ple there, they said that the black moth is often a mes­sen­ger of death. I was like, Oh, great. I thought it was so inter­est­ing for such a beau­ti­ful crea­ture to be sym­bol­ic of death or evil. So it just kind of showed up in the sto­ry when I start­ed writing.

SZ: Sim­i­lar­ly, Anne is devot­ed to and fas­ci­nat­ed by mag­pies. Could you talk a bit about the nat­ur­al world in an urban setting?

AH: I live in an urban place, and dur­ing COVID, we start­ed to see turkeys, fox­es, and coy­otes. It’s like they were reclaim­ing the city now that peo­ple weren’t going out as much. Even though peo­ple were doing hor­ri­ble things; the nat­ur­al world was still what it was.

SZ: The sense of fore­bod­ing through­out the sto­ry is so strong. As read­ers, of course, we know the trag­ic end­ing. But I still sensed there was hope. How did you man­age to weave pos­i­tiv­i­ty into a sto­ry about such trag­ic world events?

AH: That was a hard thing to do. I think I had to take after Anne and the voice in her writ­ing, which is more pos­i­tive and hope­ful than my own. And I think a great les­son for all of us.

SZ: How did you tap into Anne’s voice?

AH: When I said yes, I knew I could­n’t write the book in the first per­son, because Anne has already writ­ten the best first-per­son nar­ra­tion in lit­er­a­ture. And very often when I write for young peo­ple or just in gen­er­al, I like to write in the first per­son because you get inside their per­spec­tive. So I had to fig­ure out how to get inside her head but not speak for her. I was afraid; I want­ed to do her justice.

SZ: I want to ask you about the rela­tion­ship between Anne and Mar­got. They’re in the posi­tion to under­stand each oth­er more than any­one else, and yet they find them­selves at odds with each oth­er. This quote felt so indica­tive of their rela­tion­ship: ​“They were so very dif­fer­ent, but they were sis­ters all the same. You can love some­one who doesn’t under­stand you. That’s what Anne had decid­ed. You can trust them more than any­one else.” Could you speak a bit about how you devel­oped their rela­tion­ship on the page?

AH: I write very often about sis­ters. I don’t have a sis­ter, so that’s a huge empti­ness in my life. A lot of how I depict­ed Anne and Mar­got came from research. Mar­got, it turns out, real­ly was the beau­ti­ful one, the well-behaved one — the favorite in a lot of ways. With­in fam­i­lies, there’s often this feel­ing that you take on a cer­tain role.

Anne had to find her own role, one dif­fer­ent from her sister’s. And she was dif­fi­cult, accord­ing to the few peo­ple I met who knew her. (Of the two sis­ters, I relate more to Anne!) Despite their dif­fer­ences, at the end of their lives they were togeth­er con­stant­ly. They took care of each oth­er and — I feel like cry­ing — they died with­in days of each oth­er. I based most of their rela­tion­ship on this piece of research that I had read about the end of their lives and, in a sense, I wrote their rela­tion­ship back­wards from this time. It real­ly shaped my thinking.

SZ: Anne’s par­ents play inter­est­ing roles in the book. Anne feels under­stood and val­ued by her father. But in her moth­er’s eyes, she can do noth­ing right. How did you craft those impor­tant relationships?

AH: My research revealed that Anne and her father had a spe­cial rela­tion­ship, and that he kind of favored her. She had a fraught and com­plex rela­tion­ship with her moth­er, and her par­ents’ mar­riage wasn’t a love match. I used those details and imag­ined the rest.

SZ: In the book, the Franks’ house (their home before going into hid­ing) is a kind of char­ac­ter, safe and warm.

AH: When I went to the house, I was actu­al­ly invit­ed to stay there, which I could­n’t do. Today, the house is open to writ­ers who aren’t able to write in their home coun­tries. The house is in a beau­ti­ful neigh­bor­hood. It feels very safe. I think it was a great neigh­bor­hood when the Franks moved there. There were a lot of immi­grants com­ing in then. And the house itself is love­ly. Even being there for a short vis­it was super emo­tion­al for me.

SZ: Oma, Anne’s grand­moth­er, under­stands Anne in a way that no one else does. Oma escaped the Nazi regime in Ger­many and then, once again, found her­self in the wrong place at the wrong time, in Amsterdam.

AH: It’s like they picked the wrong place to move to, but of course you just nev­er know how things are going to work out. I based a lot of that grand­moth­er – grand­daugh­ter dynam­ic on my own rela­tion­ship with my grand­moth­er, who was Russ­ian and the per­son that I was clos­est to grow­ing up. I’ve always believed that if you have one per­son in your life who sup­ports you com­plete­ly, then you’re real­ly for­tu­nate. And I think that was true of Anne. I know it was cer­tain­ly true for me. So I was writ­ing about my grand­moth­er in a way.

SZ: The final moments in the book are a pow­er­ful call to doc­u­ment and act as a wit­ness, even if you don’t have the chance to see what comes of that preser­va­tion. Could you speak a bit about this?

AH: When we read about the Holo­caust, we know how it ends. But peo­ple at the time did­n’t see it com­ing, and they did­n’t want to. Up until the end, they could­n’t believe what was hap­pen­ing to them. (Although Otto Frank — and oth­ers who went into hid­ing — were preparing.)

SZ: This is a com­ing-of-age sto­ry for Anne and Mar­got. Anne comes to see what her par­ents have been shield­ing her from, but she pre­tends not to in order to alle­vi­ate their wor­ry. Through­out the sto­ry, Anne has an unquench­able thirst to be old­er, which even­tu­al­ly becomes tem­pered. Could you talk about her somber com­ing of age?

AH: The first time I ever went to the Anne Frank House, I saw pho­tos of some­what mod­ern movie stars. When you read The Diary, you imag­ine that its events took place so long ago. But they didn’t. This was all hap­pen­ing dur­ing rel­a­tive­ly recent times. I knew the names of the movie stars. Anne’s dreams— want­i­ng to go to Cal­i­for­nia and be a writer — are such typ­i­cal girl­hood dreams. She was spe­cial, but she was also ordi­nary. That made me feel clos­er to her and her story.

SZ: What was the writ­ing process like for When We Flew Away?

AH: The writ­ing process for this nov­el had many stages. The ini­tial research and note­tak­ing one, and then out­lin­ing, draft­ing, and more research fol­lowed by my vis­it to Ams­ter­dam. Then I did more revi­sions and worked with my edi­tors. It always seems to me that when you fin­ish the book you for­get these dif­fer­ent steps because the project is whole and it has become what it’s meant to be.

SZ: What are some of the books that shaped you when you were the age that Anne is in When We Flew Away?

AH: Anne Frank’s diary was real­ly impor­tant to me. Ray Brad­bury, too. Read­ing Brad­bury when you’re twelve or thir­teen can change your life. His nov­el about book burn­ing and ban­ning, Fahren­heit 451, had a huge influ­ence on me because I spent so much time in the library. When I was younger than that, I read books by Edward Eager, which I just loved. He had a whole series of mag­ic books, includ­ing Half Mag­ic. And I used to steal books from my moth­er’s book­shelf, so what­ev­er she was read­ing, I was reading.

SZ: What are you work­ing on now?

AH: I’m work­ing on a cou­ple of things. One is a book about women in the 1950s and the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, look­ing at the sim­i­lar­i­ties in the way they were treat­ed. It was­n’t so long ago that women weren’t allowed to wear pants. There were, and still are, so many things off-lim­its to girls. So I’ve been think­ing about the things that women haven’t been allowed to do through­out history.