In the summer of 2021, when I was writing Summer at the French Café, travel between the UK and France was tricky. I did have a research trip booked but Covid restrictions obliged me to cancel. However, I’d chosen to set the novel in Alsace, France because I’d researched the area for Just for the Holidays and therefore had contacts, my memory bank, and a great photo library. I also had, ready made in my imagination, the village of Kirchhoffen and the town of Muntsheim.
Maybe you’ve noticed that those names sound more German than French. Alsace has a mixed history, as it has several times switched between being French and German. The border between France and Germany now seems settled as the Rhine River (Rhein in German, Rhin in French, Rijn in Dutch) but Alsace has a Germanic appearance, to this British eye. It’s a beautiful region. Many of the buildings are tall and narrow, brightly coloured and timbered. The Rhine and The Rhône have a multitude of tributaries to provide not just a border but a network of smaller rivers and canals, spanned by iron bridges edged with flowers.
It’s not unusual for menus to name dishes in both French and German and many languages are heard owing to Alsace’s position – not just sharing borders with Germany and Switzerland but close to The Netherlands, Belgium and northern Italy, and having its own dialect: Alsatian. Alsace is also within striking distance of Brits, once they find their way over, under or across the English Channel. I flew to the largest city of Alsace, Strasbourg, but I’ve also driven through Alsace en route to Switzerland, having gone beneath the English Channel on the train.
The village of Kirchhoffen, where Kat lives in Summer at the French Café and Leah and family stay in Just for the Holidays (Just for the Summer in the US and Canada), is based on Ostwald, where a friend of mine lives. It’s on the same tramline and is the same distance from Strasbourg but I usually like to fictionalise my settings so I can add and subtract at will.
The park in Summer at the French Café, where both Kat and Noah work, I have transplanted from Northamptonshire, in England. Wicksteed Park has everything from rollercoasters and carousels to lakes, wild walks and formal gardens. Unsurprisingly, it’s known for miles around. My own home is built on land bought from the park nearly a hundred years ago. I understand that the site was a pony track, and we found several horseshoes in the garden when we first moved here. When my local gym was closed, I walked in the park almost every day and not only mentally transplanted it to Alsace but added a parade of shops, including Café et Livres, the book café that Kat runs. (I know that ‘Café et Livres’ is ungrammatical to the French eye but the book café is owned by Brits and the name they chose is easy for tourists to understand. Also, even a French friend couldn’t come up with anything better.) I’ve used the park layout for Parc Lemmel and ‘borrowed’ a little of its history, having it bequeathed to the public by a successful industrialist. I’ve added staff quarters, but their position is hazy in my imagination. I’m afraid they’re probably situated where homes exist in real life.
Summer at the French Café and Just for the Holidays are connected only by setting and Kat, who is the heroine of the former and made a fleeting appearance in the latter. But with a combination of real places and a village and town I created, these novels needed just one more thing – sunny weather! And that, I was delighted to add. A long, hot summer is everything in a summer book.
Sue
Moorcroft is a Sunday Times bestselling author and has reached the #1
spot on Kindle UK and Top 100 Kindle US. She’s won the Goldsboro Books
Contemporary Romantic Novel Award, Readers’ Best Romantic Novel award and the
Katie Fforde Bursary. Published by HarperCollins in the UK, US and Canada and
by other publishers around the world, Sue’s next book is Summer at the
French Café (Avon, HarperCollins) published on 12th
May in paperback, ebook and audio.
Part of a British army family, Sue was born in Germany and then lived in Cyprus and Malta before settling in the UK. She left Germany at only six weeks old but has since learned enough German to order beer (several kinds).
