Libba Bray Talks the Timely Nature of Under the Same Stars and Becoming Our Own Heroes 

Publishing is a notoriously tricky business. From the long lead time prior to a book’s release, the occasional multi-year gaps between titles in popular series, and a release calendar that seems to be constantly shifting, authors have very little control over when their work will see the light of day. And even the most popular writers—those that publishers will bend over backward to ensure that their books get prominent marketing pushes and plum pub dates—can’t control the world a title will arrive in. But sometimes, lightning strikes, and a particular title arrives at a moment that feels positively inspired—as though it was always meant to reach readers’ hands precisely when it was most meant to. Such is the case with Libba Bray’s Under the Same Stars, an exploration of hope, resistance, and resilience spread across three distinct historical moments. 

The story ostensibly revolves around three groups of teens—in 1940s Nazi Germany, 1980s West Berlin, and 2020 COVID-lockdown New York—who are all connected by a tree known as the Bridegroom’s Oak. Now a registered national monument in Germany, the tree has a hole high up on its trunk that was once used for posting letters. Though the lives of German teens Hannah and Sophie, American ex-pat Jenny and Berlin native Lena, and Zoom school seniors Miles and Chloe initially seem as though they have little in common, Bray deftly weaves a historical mystery across all three decades whose lessons ring like a bell to our current moment. They say that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme, and Under the Same Stars is, without doubt, precisely the story our current moment requires. One part history lesson, one part call to action, and one part necessary reminder that we hold within ourselves the power to shape the world we want to be part of, it’s a book that’s going to (deservedly) end up on a lot of best-of lists come December.

We got the chance to chat with Libba Bray herself about the surprising (and unfortunate) timeliness of Under the Same Stars, the hope at the heart of its story

Paste Magazine: First, tell me a little bit about where the inspiration for this book came from. It’s certainly a bit of a swerve from, say, your Gemma Doyle or Diviners series, which I think a lot of our readers will be familiar with.

Libba Bray: It’s definitely my first book that doesn’t involve some aspect of the otherworldly or absurd—and believe me, it was hard for me not to go there! In fact, I had been working on this Princess Bride-meets-Monty Python sort of thing when, in the spring of 2020, Grace Kendall and Elizabeth Lee at FSG sent me an article in The Atlantic about a 500-year-old matchmaking tree in Northern Germany called The Bridegroom’s Oak and asked me if I thought there was a novel in there somewhere.

 It’s a deeply romantic, fairy tale-like tree but for some reason, I was stuck on the idea of it as a possible drop site for spies. I wondered, Hey, what if that tree was used by the resistance during World War II? And from that little acorn, to beat the metaphor to death, rose this novel. But I also like to say that the novel does contain magic—the magic of ordinary people showing extraordinary courage. 

Paste: Is it weird that this title makes me think of “Somewhere Out There” from An American Tail?

Bray: If you need to let out your inner Ronstadt/Neville, I would never stop you. 

Paste: I know you can’t possibly have had any control over the fact that Under the Same Stars is arriving on shelves at this exact moment, but it’s almost uncanny how timely this story is. How do you feel like this book speaks to the moment we’re finding ourselves in? 

Bray: I know. It is…eerie. I began writing Under the Same Stars during the first Trump administration. At the time, I was deeply alarmed by the rise in hate crimes and the drift toward far-right ideology and authoritarianism both at home and around the world. When we know history, we recognize the trends and events that are the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. We also had no idea what this pandemic would do to us, how long we’d all be isolated from one another, fearful of one another, which, frankly, added fuel to our current fire. There was a lot going on. And now, here we are. Mark Twain famously said that “history doesn’t repeat but it rhymes” and we are rhyming like hell right now. As part of my research, I listened to William L. Shirer’s Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941. It was chilling to see the parallels with our present moment. 

At the same time, we must not fall into despair and numb ourselves with denial or nihilism. We mustn’t believe that we can affect nothing. The truth is, we, the people, hold all the power. And that scares the shit out of those who are making these terrible decisions. The great thing about studying history is not only that, yes, it shines a light on our past transgressions but that it shows us again and again that there will always be people who will refuse to be complicit. People who will show courage. History warns us but it also shows us a path forward; it shows us that hope endures and survives. 

Paste: Most of this book is technically historical fiction — how does writing in that genre differ from writing more fantasy-focused or even contemporary books?

Bray: In many ways, it doesn’t. At the end of the day, it’s still about the human condition. Love, anger, fear, cowardice, courage, desire, ambition, hope, joy, etc.—these are a constant; these are timeless.

Paste: Other than the fact that the math checks out in terms of timing, what made you want to set the three main prongs of this story in 1940s Germany, 1980s Germany, and 2020s New York?

Bray: I’m always glad when the math checks out because I nearly failed math! Because two of my questions were, How does authoritarianism get a foothold, and How do people resist tyranny and oppression, it seemed natural to look at both the Third Reich and the GDR. But in 2020, we also had the George Floyd protests. And it seemed in that moment that America might be willing to have a reckoning with its own sins. 

Sadly, the gains from that brief awakening are being actively dismantled by this administration. America tends to mythologize its past and cloak its denial in “patriotism,” just as the Third Reich and the GDR did. 

Paste: Which was the most enjoyable and which was the most challenging of the three time periods for you to write about/in?

Bray: Once I got past the sobering realization that I, too, had been sixteen in 1980 and therefore, my adolescence counted as “historical,” I had a blast writing the scenes with Jenny and Lena and their friends. I am such a music fan as well as a Bowie fan. (I…might have spent the better part of an afternoon watching a YouTube video of Tony Visconti, the producer on “Heroes,” lay out each individual instrumental and vocal track along with the story behind the song’s creation. Fripp! Eno! Bowie! I regret nothing.) 

If Sophie and Hanna are constrained by the semi-occupation of their town and Miles and Chloe are constrained by a global pandemic, that middle section is mostly freedom (though, of course, the Berlin Wall looms over it all). Those girls, the band rehearsals, the wild parties at the squat, the discovery of Berlin, the burgeoning romance—it was just an absolute delight to write. I also want to give a shout-out to an excellent book, Tim Mohr’s Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. A vital part of my research and so, so good!

The most challenging was actually the 2020 timeline. We were still deep in the pandemic when I wrote the first draft but by the time I got to the last few drafts, I found, rather fascinatingly, that I kept forgetting things. “Were we wearing masks then? Did I fear touching things in a store? How long was it before we stopped washing our grocery packaging? How did it feel not to be able to see friends and loved ones?” So, in a way, writing that timeline was instrumental to the theme—this is how we forget. How we brush aside painful things. This is how denial works. I experienced it in real-time. 

Paste: The three plots are (obviously) so interconnected, even as each “story” still stands on its own. How did you keep it all straight in terms of what was revealed in which “timeline” and when? (Thinking about it kind of makes my head hurt.)

Bray: Haha! It makes my head hurt, too! I have so little executive functioning that I once left my house wearing two different shoes and it wasn’t until I got to the subway that I thought, Why am I walking so funny? I looked down, realized my mistake. And like a true New Yorker, carried on because I had already paid my fare. This is to say that there was a lot of clean-up and revision involved here. Like laying out a tile mosaic and having to rearrange the pieces again and again. The one thing that was absolutely different this time around was that I wrote a 25,000-word synopsis—beginning, middle, and end—before I started. I needed to know where that mystery led, and so I told myself the story, like a fairy tale. 

Paste: I loved the Hare and the Deer fable within the story and the way it shifted pretty much every time we went back to it. Tell me a little about what made you want to include that as a narrative device.

Bray: Thank you so much! I love fairy tales, always have. I find them fascinating little windows into psychology and sociology. They are never really about the surface story but about the story that lurks underneath. Fairy tales function as Greek Chorus. It’s a very sneaky way of imparting a warning—“Don’t trust every shiny apple”—or prodding one toward the better angels of our nature—“kindness and compassion matter.” It’s also a way, as Frau Hermann points out, for someone to process difficult or traumatic experiences—by weaving it into fiction. 

I also thought  that the farther we get from history, and as the living witnesses to these various horrors leave us, the more history itself can seem like a fairy tale. Some might see the “fairy tale” as just a dusty story from the past. Others might see what that tale from the past is trying to tell us. And the more one dives into history, the more truth is revealed.

Paste: You really never take the easy way out as a storyteller in this book, if that makes sense. (I mean it as a compliment!) Hard, dark, frightening things happen in this story. Some characters don’t get happy endings. Some do terrible or shameful things and are deeply hurt or changed by them. How important was it for you as a writer that this book is at least as grim as it is hopeful? 

Bray: I think this may be one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received, LOL! But that’s life, isn’t it? We humans are contradictory, complicated little things. We are flawed. We make mistakes. The hope is that we grow and change from those experiences, that we are seasoned by them and can make better choices going forward, that the challenges we live through or the things we screw up give us the perspective, wisdom, and compassion to make the world a kinder, fairer place in some way. It makes me think about the end of Into the Woods: “People make mistakes/Holding to their own/Thinking they’re alone/Honor their mistakes/Everybody makes/Fight for their mistakes/One another’s terrible mistakes/ Witches can be right, Giants can be good/You decide what’s right you decide what’s good. Just remember…no one is alone.” 

God, Sondheim. What a genius. 

Paste: “Heroes” is one of my all-time favorite David Bowie songs by the way, and I feel like in a lot of ways it’s kind of an unspoken anthem for this book. If there’s an action item you’d like readers to take from this story — is that it?

Bray: Isn’t it such a perfect song? I hear something new every time I listen. And the older I get, the more meaningful I find its message. I think it truly is the unspoken anthem for the book—and the personification of hope as an action verb.

It’s not “Let’s storm the castle!” It’s realistic. A little sad. Hopeful. And determined. “We can beat them. Just for one day.” 

Paste: What’s next for you as an author? Are you working on anything you can tell us about? 

Bray: I’d love to tell you about all the things!  I’m finishing up the first draft of a novel I describe as Almost Famous-meets-Friday Night Lights. It’s set in a small Texas town in 1980 and is a love letter to radio and the power of music, especially in adolescence. I’m also starting work on my first adult novel, a spooky, Gothic-y thing set in upstate New York in the late 1800s. There’s the previously mentioned Princess Bride/Monty Python book which I’ve been working on as time allows with my son, Josh, who is doing illustrations. That has been such a blast! He’s so smart about story and approaching it from the visual angle has been mind-expanding for me.

And then there’s my wild card project: a musical! During the pandemic, I returned to my theater roots and wrote and recorded twelve of the fifteen songs with various lovely musician friends and now I’m working on the script. It is such a joy and a privilege to be able to tell stories. I feel very fortunate to be able to do this work.

Paste: My favorite question, always: What are you reading right now? Anything our readers should be keeping an eye out for in the coming months?

Bray: Right now, I’m reading Jordan Harper’s The King of California. I devoured his LA noir, Everybody Knows. He’s an incredible writer. Nova Ren Suma is an auto-buy for me. Huge fan. I’ll read anything she writes. Her novel, Wake the Wild Creatures, hits shelves on May 6th and you can pre-order it now. I am excited that Karen Russell has a new novel coming in March—The Antidote. And I just picked up Kelis Rowe’s Finding Jupiter, which I’ve been saving to read on a plane ride I’m taking this month. So many books! I have a sliver of vacation time planned for May and I’m going to lie around reading while listening to the forlorn sighs of the world’s most French New Wave-movie of a dog.   

Under the Same Stars is available now wherever books are sold. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB