Ella Leffland, whose critically acclaimed novels "probed the layered history of her home state as well as the mental topography of outsiders and villains, including the Nazi leader Hermann Goering," died September 18, the New York Times reported. She was 92.
Leffland grew up in Martinez, Calif. Her parents were Danish immigrants who referred to their native country as "home." In an interview, she said, "I think coming from a family that was different and had a different attitude toward things had a bearing on the people I write about." Memories of her California youth during World War II inspired one of her best known novels, Rumors of Peace (1979).
The Nazis were ever-present in her personal "sphere of terror," she added. Leffland tackled the topic of war directly in her "historical biographical novel about Goering, The Knight, Death and the Devil (1990)." Leffland "researched her subject with the zeal of a historian, including traveling to Germany to interview key Third Reich figures like Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler's architect and close confidant, who served 20 years in prison as a war criminal," the Times noted.
"I went by my feeling that the novel, with its layered interworkings of meaning, was the only form appropriate to the complexities and incongruities of Goering's character," she once said.
At 28, Leffland sold her first short story, "Eino," about the impact of World War II on a German boy, to the New Yorker for $750. In 1970, she published her first novel, Mrs. Munck, which was transformed into a dark comedy for Showtime in 1995, starring Diane Ladd, who also directed the film and adapted the screenplay with Leffland.
Her novel Love Out of Season (1974) chronicled a tangled love affair between a San Francisco artist and a school psychologist, while Breath and Shadows (1999) was a survey of three generations of a wealthy Danish clan.
Leffland continued publishing short stories in magazines including the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's, as well as in various literary journals. In 1977, she was a winner of the O. Henry Award for her short story "Last Courtesies."
She once said, "I started writing at about 10, and all I can say is that it's gotten harder ever since."