Westport Sportswriter Publishes a Love Story

"A novel can't live on love alone," sportswriter Frank Deford told an audience at the Westport Public Library this week. "It requires a context and closely observed details to maintain interest.

And so when Deford — renowned Sports Illustrated writer, NPR commentator and author of 15 books — set out two years ago to write a love story, he gave it a unique historical context.

Bliss, Remembered, published last week by The Overlook Press in New York, is a historical novel set in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. To his knowledge, it's the first fictional romance set at an Olympics event.

His leading fictional characters are Sydney Stringfellow, an 18-year-old American swimmer, and her love interest, Horst Gerhardt, a handsome young Nazi she meets at the Olympics.

Their love story is infused with true-life dramas of real characters, including  Eleanor Holm, a Gold Medalist suspended from the American Olympic Team in 1936 for drinking, and legendary German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.

On assignments for Sports Illustrated, Deford had opportunities to meet both Holm and Riefenstahl.

He spent two days with Riefenstahl in Munich in 1988, the 50th anniversary of the release of her acclaimed film of the 1936 Berlin Oympics, "Olympia."

"'Olympia' is an ode to athletics and the male body," he said.

He said Riefenstahl spent the last decades of her life — she died at age 101 in 2003 — defending herself from accusations that she was a Nazi propagandist first and foremost and an artist secondarily, a reputation that came with release of "Triumph of the Will," a celebration of the Nazi Party Congress in 1934.

"I don't think she gave a damn about politics but was driven by an incredible ambition. She was a very, very opportunistic lady," he said. "Thinking about her extended the reach of the novel."

In Bliss, Remembered, Deford has Stringfellow stepping in to take Holm's place on the team as he has Gerhardt serving as Riefenstahl's assistant in the production of"Olympia," released in 1938.

Deford tracked down surviving members of the U.S. Swim Team who competed at the 1936 Olympics to give the novel verisimilitude. A glittery party hosted by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, attended by Stringfellow and Gerhardt, actually took place.

Stringfellow's love affair is revealed to her son for the first time as she is dying of cancer and she wants him to know of the momentous times she lived through.

Deford assumes Stringfellow's voice, the first time he has written in the voice of a woman discreetly telling all to her doting son, Teddy.

Discussing his book with an audience of 100 at the Westport Public Library, Deford was asked if he found it difficult to write in a woman's voice.  

He insisted it was surprisingly easy.

"After all, you're not alien to me," he told the woman questioner.

"It was fun being a woman for a change," said the tall and lanky Deford, who has lived in Westport since 1974 with his wife. They have two daughters.

Deford now embarks on a book tour that will take him to major cities along the East Coast.

Interested in purchasing the book? Click here.