Interlocutor Gregory Galloway.

Anne Whiteside first studied Franco-British relations listening in on conversations between her French mother and British father, Marie and Tom Whiteside, both long term Cornwall residents. Her book is about her mother’s brother, whose work in the French Resistance she spent 10 years researching.

She’s spent the last 10 years researching her mother’s brother’s work in the French resistance. Early on she studied art, anthropology, then did a doctorate in educational linguistics, about which she’s written/edited a number of articles and books. For over 30 years she taught English to immigrants, teachers at San Francisco State University and undergraduates at U.C. Berkeley; she’s lectured in Ireland, Spain, Algeria and France, and had a Fulbright teaching/research fellowship in Mexico.

The Moon in Splinters is her first book of literary non-fiction. It was published by Chiselbury in September 2025.

At age twenty, Maurice Pertschuk spent a year as an agent of Churchill’s “secret army” working with the French resistance. Landing on the Côte d’Azur spring 1942, he led a clandestine network distributing anti-Vichy propaganda, gathering intelligence, then stocking arms for sabotage. As opposition to the occupiers grew, German military intelligence began infiltrating resistance circuits. A plot to blow up a gunpowder factory shipping chemicals to Germany turned into a trap: Pertschuk and many of his group were arrested, then deported to Germany. At Buchenwald, where he managed to conceal the fact that he was Jewish for 14 months, Pertschuk began composing lyrical poetry, written on scavenged bits of paper, a collection he called “Leaves of Buchenwald.” He was executed just 13 days before liberation, but his poetry survives, rescued by friends, published in 1946 and again in 2003.

Gregory Galloway received an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has published poetry, short stories, essays and novels. His first novel, As Simple As Snow, received the Alex Award from the American Library Association, and Just Thieves was named one of the “best noir novels” of the year.

“The Moon in Splinters” will be available for sale and for signing.

Registration is required at cornwalllibrary.org.