July 20, 2025
Jessie Fordham: How a Girl Becomes a Spy

From a haunted lake to the heart of World War II espionage

Childhood in the Shadows
When readers first meet Jessie Fordham in Walking Away from Midnight, she’s just nine years old, stubborn, sharp-eyed, and deeply curious. It’s 1926, and she’s spending the summer in northern France at her parent's summer home, the eerily named Midnight Lake. What should be a peaceful visit turns into a moment of personal trauma and revelation, as Jessie stumbles upon a forgotten grave, and something much darker that no one will explain.

This moment doesn’t just change her. It defines her.

A Girl Caught Between Loyalty and Lies
Unlike many historical fiction heroines, Jessie doesn’t arrive ready to fight for justice. She’s angry and mistrustful. Raised by a father who buries secrets and a mother who fades into memory, she grows up unsure of who she can trust, or who she’s supposed to become.

But the real world doesn’t wait for clarity.

As Europe edges toward war, Jessie is pulled from place to place: Egypt, England, and eventually Cambridge. Her mind is brilliant, trained in languages, observation, and inference. Her surroundings are steeped in military secrecy. And her family? Entangled in a long and dangerous legacy of power, betrayal, and espionage.

By the time Walking Away from Midnight ends, Jessie isn’t a child anymore.

She’s a woman on the brink of war, emotionally wounded, intellectually armed, and morally cornered.

A Spy Is Not Born. She’s Shaped
There’s a myth in popular fiction that spies are trained like soldiers, recruited, disciplined, and deployed.

But Jessie Fordham is something different.

She becomes a spy not through training, but through pain, survival, and choice. Her story reflects the reality of so many real-life women during World War II:

  • The translators at Bletchley Park
  • The couriers for the French Resistance
  • The women who worked quietly in embassies and didn’t speak of what they knew

Women like Odette Sansom, Noor Inayat Khan, and American Virginia Hall, all of whom took on missions with no guarantees of safety or recognition.

Jessie isn’t based on one of them. But she’s haunted by all of them.

Her Strength Isn’t Bravery — It’s Refusal
Jessie’s story is about transformation. But it’s also about refusal.

  • Refusal to be silent about what happened at Midnight Lake.
  • Refusal to follow in her father’s compromised diplomatic footsteps.
  • Refusal to betray herself for a cause she doesn’t believe in.

She doesn’t seek danger, it seeks her.

 And when it finds her, Jessie Fordham doesn’t run.

 Not anymore.

Discover Her Journey
If you haven’t met Jessie yet, start with Book 1 of The Midnight Series:

📖 Walking Away from Midnight

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