Interview with Lucille Abendanon, Author of The Songbird and the Rambutan Tree

Thanks so much for visiting Smack Dab, Lucille. You have such an incredibly important story to tell. Please tell us a bit about The Songbird and the Rambutan Tree:

Thank you for having me! The Songbird and the Rambutan Tree is a middle grade historical fiction novel about a girl called Emmy who lives in Batavia, in the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia) with her Papa. Emmy’s gift is her singing voice, but when tragedy strikes, she loses her ability to sing. With World War Two looming, Emmy’s papa wants to send her away to safety, to the one place she doesn’t want to go: singing school in England. So Emmy does everything she can to stay in Batavia, roping in her best friend Bakti and putting them both in danger. Her plan works and she sabotages her only chance to escape, ruining her friendship with Bakti in the process. The Japanese army invades, and Emmy is separated from her Papa and taken to a prisoner of war camp called Tjideng. Worst of all, the meanest girl in school, Violet, is put in the same house as Emmy. Emmy must face the pain of losing the ones she loves, find the will to stay alive in Tjideng, and somehow find her voice again.  

Where did the idea for this story come from?

The book is inspired by my Dutch grandmother’s experience as a prisoner of war in Tjideng during WW2. Oma Emmy spoke openly about her years in Tjideng, and I was captivated by her stories. Our conversations spanned twenty-five years.  

Was it difficult to write the story, one that was so close to your family?

Initially, yes. I always knew I would write Oma Emmy’s story one day, but I wasn’t sure what form it would take. It didn’t feel quite right to write it as an adult novel. I think it felt disrespectful to my grandmother in some way. She was an adult when she was imprisoned in Tjideng, and to bring her to life on the page, I would have had to colour in certain aspects of her life and emotions, and I just didn’t feel that would be respectful. She always used to say, “You can listen to my words, but you’ll never truly know how it felt to be there.” And she was right. I couldn’t presume to put myself in her shoes. Writing it as a middle grade novel took that one step back and put a little bit more distance between my Oma Emmy and the protagonist Emmy. Emmy in the book is 100% inspired by the real Emmy: her grit, her determination, her fighting spirit, her sense of humor, her artistic talent. But it’s not a true to life exact depiction of my Oma, if that makes sense.

 
Did your Oma give many details about the actual prisoner of war camp? Did you find yourself inserting details to keep the story moving?

Oma Emmy gave me every single detail of the war camp, and it’s all in the book. Well, the things appropriate for a middle grade audience, anyway. Her memories of those years were crystal clear, like it happened yesterday. I think there are elements of her story that seem so fantastical to us all these years later, like eating weevilly rice, sleeping in a cupboard, or bowing for hours in the hot sun, that I really didn’t have to embellish or add anything to keep the story moving. From a plot point of view, I made sure it was exciting, but the facts of life in Tjideng are exactly as Oma described them to me.   

How did you balance fact and fiction?

I was very fortunate that through my Oma’s stories, I had a detailed factual framework through which I could weave the fictional story. I had a list of elements from Oma’s stories I wanted to include, for example, building the bomb shelter in the garden; the army truck that transported them to Tjideng; the daily bowing at tenko; House Two and sleeping in a cupboard; Lady Mountbatten and the toilet paper; working in the central kitchen, all of these elements, and so many more are all part of Oma’s lived experience in Tjideng. Bringing the characters to life within the historical context was thrilling, and they took on a life of their own. Kitty, for example, arrived one day unannounced and wrote herself into the story! Yet, she is rooted in fact because there were many British women in prison camps all across the region.

I also wanted to portray the Indonesian struggle for independence that was going on at the same time, and the impact it had on Emmy and Bakti’s friendship. That was definitely an area where I wanted to stay true to history, whilst also trying to imagine how two children on opposite sides would be affected. 

I was very conscious of always remaining true to the history on both sides, especially since the events in the book are still within living memory for some. I did a lot of research, spent time in Indonesia and visited Tjideng, and only when I felt sure I grasped the historical context, could I drop my fictional characters in and let them get on with it.      

What struck me from the very beginning were all the sensory details. You immediately know you’re someplace quite different than the US. Did your travels help inform the worldbuilding?

That’s really lovely, thank you. It was really important to me to bring the setting to life. I grew up partly in the English countryside, and partly in South Africa and I’ve always felt very close to nature. Whenever I move to a new country, nature is always a grounding force for me, and so it felt natural for Emmy to be the same. I lived in Southeast Asia for five years, and it definitely informed the worldbuilding for this novel. For example, the Asian Koel bird, which wakes Emmy up just before dawn, comes from when I lived in Bangkok. There was a huge tree outside my bedroom window, and in the spring the Koel would wake me up every morning with its loud call. It was magical. Children experience the world with all of their senses, much more than adults, so I wanted the wonderful sensory details of Indonesia to be integral to the story.

 
What was it like to visit the actual house where your Oma lived?

Very emotional, especially when I phoned her from outside House Two. I felt incredibly grateful that she (and my Opa) survived the war, because if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been born. I felt immensely in awe of her for making it through those years, and going on to live the wonderful life she did. It also felt like I was touching the past, like 1942 was right there, just beyond my fingertips. Just for a moment, time evaporated.  

I have to admit, this stirred all sorts of feelings as I read–I had a great, great grandfather who was a prisoner in Andersonville, and have tried to track down a radio interview he supposedly gave to no avail. I can only imagine the emotions your Oma’s story must have stirred in you as you listened. (It can be hard to listen to, but it’s so important to get these stories down! Otherwise, they’re lost forever.) What advice would you give anyone getting started in documenting family history?

Oh wow, it would be amazing to find that radio interview!

I think new generations often discount older generations as being uncool, or even worse…irrelevant. Whenever I go on about living without smart phones, or how we only had an hour of kids TV in the afternoons, my kids roll their eyes! But I am always telling them there is value in the past, and magic in listening to the people who lived it share their memories of a world long gone.

My advice to anyone interested in documenting family history is:

1.     If you have a family member you can talk to, ask lots of questions. Not just ‘what happened’ questions, but ‘how did you feel’ questions too. The magic of history is often in the small details or feelings that aren’t immediately obvious on the surface, so dig a little, ask open-ended questions.  

2.     Treat the past like a foreign country and your family member as your tour guide. Ask them about what they ate, what clothes they wore, what they did after school, what was on the news at the time, what music they listened to. Notice the differences between their world back then, and our world now, but notice the similarities too.

3.     Become a detective. Human memory isn’t perfect, and sometimes, you might have to fill in some of the blanks. If you’re researching someone in your family who lived a long time ago, be creative with your Google searches and try to think of different ways to phrase things. Don’t stop at Page 1 of Google, go down the rabbit hole and see what results there are on page 24! I have found a lot of information by researching my family tree, rather than a single person. Jot down leads as you discover them, no matter how trivial, and start joining the dots. There are also organisations like Ancestry.com, where you can subscribe to gain access to census registers or search WW2 service records. Look at birth and death registers. You can even find ship manifests online, if you know your ancestor travelled somewhere by ship, for example. Often, if you dig deep and widely enough, you’ll discover something you weren’t expecting that gives wonderful context to the person you’re researching. I was researching a soldier who died in 1890, and came across his will in an database of British soldiers who died abroad. In it, he left his collection of books to his sister. That tiny fact says so much about him and their relationship!  

What’s next?

I’m currently working on book two. Set at the very end of the First World War, it’s a story of a girl called Percy who comes back to England from South Africa, to be reunited with her father who has been wounded fighting in France. But she soon learns he is more gravely ill than she was told. She begins to suspect the doctor looking after him is doing more harm than good, and when her father starts calling out a strange name in his feverish sleep, Percy sets off on a race-against-time journey to uncover a family secret. There is also a talking African pied crow and a magnificent dappled grey horse called Valerian.  

Where can we find you?

I am @Author_Luc on twitter/X; @lucilleabendanon_author on Instagram. And my website is www.lucilleabendanon.com where you’ll find lots of behind the scenes information about the book and the real Emmy.