Based on a true story… 

Behind every story there is another question. “Why do I need to write this?”  Islands of Deception is based on notes that my father sent me near the end of his life.  We had been estranged for many years. The notes were fascinating.  All I knew about him was that he told stories, some of which bordered on the fantastic and some that made sense.

He was a spy. I could have left it alone, but his tale kept coming back to me.  Eventually my husband fished through hundreds of U.S. Army counterintelligence reports and found the matching narrative.  It was true and I was hooked.  For me the path led to research, assembling notes from the many years that I had been close to my aunt.  Her stories and his were often in conflict.  I had no knowledge of war or of the South Pacific, but people stepped up to help.  The more I learned, the more questions I had about these characters and their experiences.

Of course if someone is breaking up an espionage ring that operates through brothels and bars in exotic locations, the imagination has to come in to play.  The story becomes larger than its original life, and that is a good thing.

FROM KIRKUS REVIEWS – 

Author Hood (Off the Tracks: A Beatnik Family Journey, 2014) paints a vivid picture of war-torn Europe and the epistemological distance between those who see the inevitable and those who turn a blind eye to Nazi aggression. Her knowledge of the period’s politics is broad and her prose self-assured. The novel borrows from her father’s life, and her loving attention to her protagonist, beautifully drawn, is evident throughout. Hans is a complex figure, patriotic but conflicted, unsure where his loyalties should lie.

A thrilling, sensitively conceived historical novel.