SPYING ON SPIES and other books by Marissa Moss

I met Marissa Moss at an author event, and when I heard about her books, I was thrilled to send her interview questions. Her book SPYING ON SPIES: HOW ELIZABETH FRIEDMAN BROKE THE NAZIS’ SECRET CODES talks about Elizabeth Friedman, a groundbreaking woman in STEM. The back matter even includes codes that kids can learn.

One of the founders of US cryptology who would eventually become one of the world’s greatest code breakers, Elizebeth Smith Friedman (1892–1980) was a brilliant mind behind many important battles throughout the 20th century, saving many lives through her intelligence and heroism. Whip-smart and determined, Elizebeth displayed a remarkable aptitude for language and recognizing patterns from a young age. After getting her start by looking for linguistic clues to the true authorship of Shakespeare’s writings, she and her husband, William Friedman, were tasked with heading up the first government code-breaking unit in America, training teams and building their own sophisticated code systems during the lead-up to World War I.

Elizebeth’s solo career was even more impressive. She became the Treasury Department’s and Coast Guard’s first female codebreaker and created her own top-notch codebreaking unit, where she trained and led many male colleagues. During Prohibition in the 1920s, her work solving and intercepting coded messages from mobsters and criminal gangs lead to hundreds of high-profile criminal prosecutions, including members of Al Capone’s gang. Her crowning achievement came during World War II, when Elizebeth uncovered an intricate network of Nazi spies operating in South America, a feat that neither law enforcement nor intelligence agencies had been able to accomplish. Despite her unparalleled accomplishments, she was largely written out of history books and overshadowed by her husband. Only in very recent years has her name begun to receive the attention it deserves, including the US Coast Guard naming a ship in her honor and the US Senate passing a 2019 resolution to honor her life and legacy.

You’ve published more than seventy (!) books. What keeps you writing after all this time?

I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve done a wide variety of stories from picture books to adult graphic memoir. Some books I’ve illustrated myself while others have illustrators chosen by the publisher. I keep writing because there are always more stories to tell. I often focus on historical figures who have been ignored, usually because they were women. Researching these people is always inspiring. It’s important to get their stories out to readers.

It certainly is. Your informational middle grade book, SPYING ON SPIES, focuses on Elizebeth Smith Friedman, who would eventually become one of the world’s greatest code breakers. What do you hope readers glean from this story once they’re done reading?

With Spying on Spies, I’m hoping readers are inspired by Elizebeth’s determination. She grew up at a time when professional choices for women were few, but she used her intelligence and curiosity to create what was a new field at the time, code-making and code-breaking.

Wonderful. Out of all the books you’ve written, which one do you feel has most connected you with readers and why?

Of all the books I’ve written, Amelia’s Notebook has definitely touched the most people. I still get messages from young women who grew up reading Amelia and were inspired by her notebook to write and draw in their own journals. Many of them now have creative work that came out of their young start imitating Amelia.

I cherish my copy of Amelia’s Notebook as well! What are some of your current projects?

I’m working on a couple of things now. Usually I juggle at least two projects so if I get stuck on one, I can go to the other one. When I go back to the first one, I can see it freshly and am able to tackle whatever issue had held me up before. Right now I’m working on a middle-grade graphic novel mystery I’m writing with Mia Armstrong—and also illustrating. I ghost-wrote Mia’s picture book which came out last year, but she wanted to tell a story closer to her current life in middle school. She’s a lot of fun to work with and I try to capture as much of her personality and sense of humor as I can. Mia wanted the story to be a murder mystery but I convinced her killing off a teacher wouldn’t be popular with schools and libraries so we came up with another kind of mystery. The important thing is that Mia solves the crime while figuring out the strange social mystery that middle school is. I’m also working on two other books in the same format as Spying on Spies, both about women who deserved to be better known. One is a scientist, the other was a spy in WWII.

Order SPYING ON SPIES: HOW ELIZABETH FRIEDMAN BROKE THE NAZIS’ SECRET CODES