The Secret War of Julia Child

Local author Diana R. Chambers debuts her new book tonight at Copperfield's

Diana R. Chambers and her new book, The Secret War of Julia Child.

The bio on Sebastopol writer Diana Chamber’s website begins, “Diana R. Chambers was born with a book in one hand and a passport in the other.” This perfectly captures this vivacious local writer—an inveterate traveler and the author of four novels.

Her newest book, The Secret War of Julia Child, published by Sourcebooks, was just named “One of the Must-Read books for Fall 2024” by People Magazine.

The Secret War of Julia Child is a sparkling fictional retelling of Julia Child’s intelligence work with the OSS in India and China during World War II—and her meeting with Paul Child, a fellow OSS officer, who would become her husband.

People magazine said of the book, “The celebrated chef’s zest, humor and generous spirit come through brilliantly in this captivating fictional take on her WWII work in Asia for a U.S. spy agency.”

Chambers is celebrating the book’s launch at Copperfield’s in Sebastopol tonight, Friday, Oct. 25, at 7 pm.

A fascinating protagonist

Julia Child wanted to be a writer from a young age (“a woman writer” as they said at the time). After college at Smith, she worked briefly in an advertising agency in New York, before returning to Pasadena to care for her dying mother.

“Her very traditional father gave her the ultimatum that she had to marry by the age of 30,” Chambers said. “In those days, women’s roles were very constrained.”

The outbreak of World War II saved her from a socially acceptable marriage to the heir of the Los Angeles Times.

“When Pearl Harbor came, she said, ‘Oh, okay, I have a duty. You know, I can't get married now.’ She did some volunteer work with the the local defenses in downtown LA, and then she went to Washington, and there she quickly got a job with the OSS.”

‘As a young girl, she read Nancy Drew; she had read spy books. This is what she wanted to do. It was very exciting to her,” Chambers said. “So she got a job at the OSS at the lowest level, as a clerk, maybe a researcher, but because of her determination, dedication and hard work ethic, she quickly rose to be come head of the secret files for the founder of OSS, Wild Bill Donovan.”

“Because of the war, women had opportunity,” Chambers said. “The world was different then. Because the men were off to war, there were suddenly these jobs. So she stepped right through that door of opportunity, and there she was.”

In charge of organizing all the files for Donovan, “She had the highest security clearance,” Chambers said.

Eventually, Child requested that she be transferred to India and then to Western China, at the end of the Burma Road, where much of the book takes place.

A life on the go

Like Child, Chambers has had a peripatetic travel life. She majored in Asian Art History in college and worked in Paris as a translator. After travelling to India, she started an import business dealing in Indian handicrafts. Chambers and her husband currently split their time between Sebastopol and Aix-en-Provence, France.

She did an enormous amount of research for her new book. “I felt it was important to do the kind of research that would enable me to walk in her size 12A shoes to understand her experience and to be able to fictionalize it honestly.”

She also travelled to many of the places mentioned in the book so she could represent them realistically.

“I love the research, and I love the travel part of writing a book,” she said. “I am a slow writer, and it takes me a long time to do it—this was 10 years. So I would only want to write something that I had a passion for myself. And so, of course, I thought, ‘Oh, well, I have to go to Asia to research it,’ and then ‘I’ve never been to Ceylon. Okay, Sign me up!’”

“As I was researching this book, I saw all these parallels between my life and hers, which I didn’t realize, and I think that kept drawing me in further and further,” Chambers said. “We both were called to India at around age 30, and the locations where she was posted were touchstones in my life.”

Chambers said she isn’t much of a cook and was never really interested in Julia Child in that way, “but as I started to learn about her and admire her energy and enthusiasm and sense of fun and also her sense of hard work, I identified with and I really came to love her.”

Chamber feels that Child’s experiences in Asia are crucial to her becoming the icon she became.

“One of the themes of my book is that had she not gone to Asia as part of her war service, she wouldn’t have had these culinary experiences that—not only did they change her palate—but they opened her up to different cultures,” Chambers said. “Her parents were waspy. Her mother was a daughter of the Mayflower. So they were very traditional Americans, and so now she sees all these cultures. And she hears Indian music. She had been a music minor in college and a history major. So she had these really eye-opening experiences. Had she not gone there, I think she would not have become Julia Child—both literally in marrying Paul and in seeing that there’s a world of food out there and feeling ‘I want to be part of it.’”

As part of her research, Chambers also enjoyed learning about a rarely discussed facet of World War II.

“We don’t read many books set in World War Two Asia,” she said. “Just Europe and the Pacific. So I thought, ‘Wow, no one has really paid attention, in fiction, to this area. So that drew me—and the spy thing.”

In a sense, this is really Chamber’s third spy novel. Her first two books, Stinger and The Company She Keeps, were romantic spy novels about the CIA in Afghanistan and Washington D.C. (They are available in Kindle editions on Amazon.) She is also the author of The Star of India, published by Penguin Books India, a historical novel based on the real life story of a Hollywood actress who fell in love with an Indian prince and resulting political fallout.

Hear Diana Chambers reading from her new book, The Secret War of Julia Child, tonight—Friday, Oct. 25—at 7 pm. at Copperfield’s, 128 N. Main St., Sebastopol.