Amy Einhorn, v-p and publisher of Amy Einhorn Books, which will publish David R. Gillham’s City of Women, says the manuscript immediately caught her attention because “I love stories I’ve never heard before. City of Women tells the story of an ordinary German woman [in Berlin during WWII]—a perspective I hadn’t seen yet. What was it like to be on the wrong side of history?” She acquired the book from Rebecca Gradinger at Fletcher & Co.
Gillham, now 55, reports that he found himself residing in a “city of women” of his own when, after years in Los Angeles and New York working in the wholesale book business and in publishing, he moved to western Massachusetts and became a stay-at-home parent. During three years of full-time parenting, he recalls, “There were very few other men at the libraries and sing-alongs and play centers and parks. So I found myself deeply involved in the conversations and company of women.”
Writing City of Women gave him a chance to combine that insight into women’s lives with the knowledge accumulated over his years as what he termed a “Berlin buff.” The two came together in describing what he calls “a place and a time, Berlin at the height of the Second World War, when the men were at the front, and it was the women making the daily choices that could lead to life-and-death decisions.”
