A week ago I was in a horrible reading slump and nothing was interesting or holding my attention. Then the postal service got on board and delivered some books that I had ordered from The Book Depository in the UK. One of the books was Ida Cook's republished memoir Safe Passage, originally published as We Followed Our Stars. It drop-kicked me out of my slump. It fascinated me and reminded me that when one puts their mind to something the simplest deeds can yield the biggest results.

Ida Cook is perhaps better known to many as Mary Burchell, the successful Mills & Boon author. Many of her fans didn't know her real name, let along that she and her sister Louise saved twenty-nine people from Germany before the war started in 1939. It all started with a gramophone. When Louise purchased a gramophone they received their introduction to opera, something that sustained them through many a hard time. They decided that they simply must hear Galli-Curci perform live and if she wouldn't come to England they would have to go to America. They each earned less than three pounds a week but decided if they saved one pound each week they would be able to go to New York in two years time. They did it and forged a life-long friendship with Galli-Curci. They later met and travelled to hear other operatic stars and it was one of them who put them of the path of saving lives.

"You never know what you can do until you refuse to take no for an answer. In this very amateur way, we did manage to rescue twenty-nine people and set them on new lives " p. 120

What I loved it that the book made me feel. I felt selfishly indulgent. I felt excessive. I felt that I wasn't doing enough with my life. It made me want but it wasn't a want of material goods. I wanted to feel this:

There were Louise and I slowly sampling the early joys of record collecting. And "slowly" was the word. The buying of one new record meant much consultation, much planning and, frequently, going without a few lunches - which is, I still think, the way one should come to one’s pleasures. That sense of glorious achievement is with me still, fifty years later. p. 27

And this:

We all earned approximately three pounds a week, made our own clothes, saw life in simple terms, envied no one, often worked shockingly hard, but saved systematically for whatever we wanted and enjoyed it extravagantly when we got it. pp. 47-48

BlogHer Contributing editor Zandria just wrote about how the economic crisis hasn't hit her yet. I was quoted in that post and it was from a post I read while reading Safe Passage. Ida and Louise Cook had small incomes. Eventually Ida's income increases dramatically as she begins to write romance novels for Mills and Boon in the 1930s, which was just around the time that they started to rescue people from Germany. Because they had never adapted to their new incomes they continued to live at their old ones and used the extra funds to save lives. The same way that they scrimped and saved to travel to New York so many years earlier they scrimped and saved to save people from what they felt was certain death. Did they ever overextend themselves? Yes, but not to buy records or clothes. They went into debt as they borrowed from everyone possible in order to secure guarantees for people in England. They went into debt for a purpose, not merely because of a want or a whim.

I'll admit that I was skeptical when I read that the Harlequin was launching a new non-fiction imprint. Many of the titles did not fill me with glee and like DS, a commentor at Dear Author I can't even contemplate wanting to read the upcoming 113 Things to Do By 13. Safe Passage is a gem of a book and I'm so thrilled that it was republished. Don't expect sensational or drama-heavy writing, Cook's prose is very matter-of-fact, but her and Louise's story is inspiring. I am so thankful to Smart Bitches Read Trashy Books for posting about it on their blog. I don't know that I would have ever picked it up otherwise. Safe Passage is being published in North America in November 2008 and is currently available for pre-order (or you can order if from the UK like I did).

Contributing Editor Sassymonkey blogs at Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads. All quotations were taken from the MIRA 2008 edition.