Most of us know her from the wonderful coalfield novels “Storming Heaven” and “The Unquiet Earth,” but local writer and West Virginia State University faculty member Denise Giardina’s bibliography also includes the 1999 historical novel “Saints and Villains,” which is based on the life of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Giardina’s novel is the third book in the Monday Book Club’s series on “Real Lives in Fiction.” The Book Club will meet to discuss the book at 6 p.m. March 27 in the art gallery at Taylor Books, 221 Capitol St.

Bonhoeffer was born in Germany in 1906, and after completing his education spent time in London, Barcelona and New York. By the late 1930s, he had returned to Germany and had begun to speak out against the growing Nazi movement and to work as an advocate for the Jewish community. He was arrested and imprisoned at the Flossenburg concentration camp in 1943 for helping Jews escape to Switzerland. He was hanged at the prison in April 1945. Bonhoeffer wrote about his time at the camp in letters to his friend, Eberhard Bethge; these letters later were compiled in “Letters and Papers from Prison,” the most widely known collection of his writings.

Giardina

“Letters” was one of many stops on the path Giardina took in researching the novel, she explained in a recent e-mail interview. Her research also included several biographies of Bonhoeffer, family memoirs and interviews with surviving family members. She also watched movies and listened to music from the time and visited various cities in Europe related to Bonhoeffer. Her research was extensive — “I was pretty much consumed by this book from 1991 through 1998,” she said.

Giardina’s interest in the Nazi era began early. “I have been fascinated and appalled by Nazi Germany since childhood and knew I wanted to write about it,” she explained. What was initially an intention to write a novel about the White Rose, a student group in Munich that opposed Hitler, gradually evolved over many years into a more focused interest in the life of Bonhoeffer.

“[I] found myself drawn to all the conflicts he faced,” Giardina said. “Bonhoeffer gave me a chance to really get into some of the complexities of the resistance to Hitler.”

Giardina outlined a number of themes she feels are important in the book: whether the use of violence is justified, the true definition of patriotism, modern concerns about fascism, and how some forms of “shallow” Christianity “can end up being the opposite of Christian.”

At the February book talk, one regular member mentioned that she was curious as to why Giardina chose to write a scene in which Bonhoeffer visits West Virginia. In her e-mail, Giardina put the scene in context, explaining that she discovered in her research that Bonhoeffer took a trip through the South at the same time workers were drilling the Hawks Nest Tunnel in West Virginia. During this trip, Bonhoeffer indicated in his letters that he came to some important realizations about his own Christianity. Giardina was intrigued.

“Because it was a terrible thing that happened there, knowing they were sending those men to dig through pure silica and they were dying left and right, I thought, in many ways, it foreshadowed the Holocaust in terms of the way people were treated, as though they were objects or machines rather than people.”

Also at the Feb. 27 meeting, readers had an interesting debate on the definitions of genius and creativity while discussing “The Moon and Sixpence,” by Somerset Maugham.

Other members of the group discussed the idea that Maugham’s main character, Charles Strickland, was “possessed” by the need to paint and whether this was an indication of genius.

“True artists are driven people — and there aren’t many of them,” one member pointed out.

On the Net:

International Dietrich Bonhoeffer Society: www.dbonhoeffer.org

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Bonhoeffer page: www.ushmm.org/bonhoeffer

To contact Regina C. Davis, use e-mail or call 348-7936.