“We’re launching a new series about exciting stories from Canadian history. Would you write a novel about Canadians in war?” When the editors at Scholastic asked me this, I had to think about it. I’d never written a novel before and had always thought of myself as a non-fiction writer. But it didn’t take me long to say, “I’d like to do a novel about Dieppe.” For my information book, DIEPPE: Canada’s Darkest Day of World War II, I’d met and interviewed some of the surviving veterans of this disastrous raid. And they had told me many powerful and moving stories––too many to put in a 48-page book.

So I decided that even though Prisoner of Dieppe would be a work of fiction, it would contain true-to-life stories of the men who were there. I also thought that the Dieppe research I’d already done would give me a head start. Wrong! The novel required extremely detailed new information. Luckily, my veterans could give me a first-hand sense of just what it was like, for example, to function when your hands are shackled in prison camp. Veteran Ron Reynolds was particularly helpful. Sadly, he died just before the book came out but it is dedicated to his memory.