‘Last Day’ is a captivating tale
By Tamira Surprenant
The Capital Times
July 2,2004

Madison’ s Judith Claire Mitchell spent over six years fine-tuning her
literary debut, “The Last Day of the War,” and the finished product is
definitely worth the labor.

The book is a sweeping saga that revolves around the lives of Yale White and
Dub Hagopian following World War I. White is an 18-year-old Jewish girl from
St. Louis who invents a series of lies about her name, age and religious
background in order to follow Hagopian to Paris in 1918.

Hagopian is a young Armenian-American soldier and a member of a subversive
group, Erinyes, which is seeking vengeance on people who initiated the 1915
Armenian massacres.

After a chance meeting with Hagopian in St. Louis, White, intent on
following her heart, crosses the Atlantic to become a YMCA canteen worker.
She is reunited with Hagopian, and instead of becoming wrapped up in the
throes of a relationship, White becomes immersed in adventures and the
Erinyes’ cause of avenging the Armenian massacre.

The story unfolds amid the proceedings of the Paris Peace Conference, where
Hagopian serves as a translator.

Mitchell, an assistant professor of English in the creative writing program
at the University of Wisconsin, succeeds in weaving a captivating
coming-of-age tale.

No matter how major or minor the roles of her characters, one of Mitchell’s
strengths in “The Last Day of the War” is character development. The
attributes, idiosyncrasies and feelings of major characters, in addition to
unsavory minor characters, are never overlooked.

White, for example, often has a bright-eyed view of her surroundings, but
when circumstances dictate, she switches gears to become serious and can
assist her friends at the drop of a hat.

Mitchell said in a telephone interview that she developed the story after
reading a series of letters written by a friend’s great aunt Wera.

Wera was a volunteer worker at the canteens in France in 1919 and wrote,
according to Mitchell, “frivolous, flirty and silly” letters interspersed
with pieces of bad news. Wera told of meeting an Armenian man whose whole
family was deported during the Armenian massacre – and the inspiration for
“The Last Day of the War” was born.

Mitchell became engrossed in relaying what her characters were going
through, but didn’t want to lose sight of the Armenian massacre. Mitchell
said she sought not to teach a lesson, but to let history unfold through the
eyes of her characters.

“I think you have to approach it through the characters or it becomes about
an event and an issue. I think specificity is important in writing if you
want to talk to people generally,” Mitchell said.

“I didn’t want to write just about the Armenian genocide, although clearly
that is important and it concerns me, but I wanted all people to think about
times in their lives when they’ve been excluded.”

In her role as a writing instructor, Mitchell tells her students that an
author and reader have different tasks. She heeded her own advice when
writing “The Last Day of the War.”

“The author needs to shut down the intellectual part of the brain and let
the characters speak,” said Mitchell. “I always tell my students, ‘Don’t
think about symbolism, metaphors or subtext, just write your story and it
will all arise.’

“One hopes that some wisdom will find its way into the story.”

Mitchell is already at work on her second novel, a project which required
her to take a junior faculty leave from her position at the UW. Mitchell
hopes to have a first draft completed when she returns to classes for the
2005 fall semester, but isn’t concerned with how long the project will take.

“My hope is that I can do it quicker than I did this one, but I don’t want
to breeze through it either,” she said. “I think that time is necessary.”

Mitchell’s initial plan is to write another historical novel set between
World Wars I and II.

“I have an idea, and one thing I’m going to do during my leave is probably
go to the place where I think the novel is going to take place – which is
something I wasn’t able to do with the first book,” Mitchell said.

“The university support will help me do that with the second one and I think
that will make a huge difference in terms of time spent, to actually be in
the place.”

Tamira Surprenant is a sports reporter for The Capital Times. Her e-mail is
tsurprenant@madison.com.

Published: 5:30 AM 7/02/04