The Forests of the Night the war as it really was, as James Kirkup observed, an "acid portrait of those who played at being members of the [French] Resistance". The novel's theme and title come from the opening lines to William Blake's poem "The Tyger": "Tiger, tiger, burning bright - in the forests of the night." "The Forests of the Night" was translated in 1951 into English by Nora Wydenbruck; it has not been re-printed since. Francis is the son of the Comte de Balansun, whose family resides in the French town of Saint-Clar, near the Pyrenees. Francis, in the beginning of the novel, skips
In the Forests of the Night and having to retype the manuscript it was changed to Aubrey, another character in the novel. She finished the novel in August of that year and spent the next four months revising the manuscript. She then sent the manuscript in on December 31, 1997. In mid-February 1998 she met her agent, Tom Hart, who later called her and informed her that Random House would publish the novel on her fourteenth birthday; however, the novel was pushed back and released a little over a year later in May 1999. "In the Forests of the Night" was first released in hardcover print