author
Helen Montague Foster
The Silent Hen
About the book
The Silent Hen is fiction based on events of WWII, written by Helen Montague Foster as a tribute to her parents and other courageous men and women of the OSS, whose secret struggles and relationships continue to impact the world.
This morally complex story follows a Jewish child sheltered by a Muslim couple in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, and a Virginia woman named Lucy whose conscience compels her to enlist in the OSS, forerunner to the CIA, for service in Egypt.
After an OSS man in love is severely injured in a parachute drop, he and the child, Bella, begin a harrowing journey to Egypt, where Lucy’s resemblance to Bella’s murdered mother will confront them with decisions for which there are no easy answers.
Where to purchase
About the author
Helen Montague Foster, MD is a retired psychiatrist, formerly a clinical professor in the department of Psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she completed her medical training. She majored in English at George Mason College with the plan of becoming a physician or writer, and during her long career as a psychiatrist/psychotherapist she has been inspired by the people she has known along the way. Her writing has appeared in JAMA, Tuck Magazine, Rattle, the Pharos, Hektoen International, Big River Poetry Review, The Richmond Times Dispatch, and Harper’s Weekly. Her debut novel, The Silent Hen, is her tenth novel manuscript.
Quotes
She bent her head to examine the little photo and extended her palms so the others could see. The picture was of a face close enough to her own to startle her.
If the Japs raided, they would be sitting ducks, but the sea was beaten with a vast sheen of reflection and a kind of living translucence superimposed on the opacity of depth. It was as if the presence of the ocean and this bereft man from Yugoslavia, the land of Margie’s relatives, had stripped away her emotional skin.
Though she didn’t recognize him, his tears made her weep too, and they stood face to face, wordless, her throat in spasm as if she’d encountered
her father or Uncle Walton.
They made their way down a path that Bella had not known. It led to a small stream where they dipped in their tin cups and drank.
Mud swirled from the bottom of the stream when her cup touched it, but the water she dipped was clear and cool as well water, and with each swallow, she felt stronger.