Matthew Wisniewski/Curb
DeVita speaks about "The Silenced" at the Wisconsin Book Festival.

When actor and author James DeVita first came across Sophie Scholl’s name, he had no idea she would change his life.

“I was doing a one-man show, the first thing I ever wrote. A little play called 'Waiting for Vern,'” DeVita recalled as he talked about the first time he came across a blurb about Sophie Scholl, the young woman who would inspire him to write both a play and a book. She was such a powerful influence on his life that he even named his daughter Sophie.

Sophie Scholl helped form one of the first resistance movements in Nazi Germany; Scholl and her peers called it The White Rose, the same name DeVita used for the resistance group in his second fictional book "The Silenced."

DeVita has long been captured by Sophie’s story. He first wrote about her in his play "The Rose of Treason." He thought the play would satisfy his interest with Sophie and the White Rose resistance. However, long after finishing his play, he was still thinking about the young woman and her fate. When asked about "The Silenced," DeVita confessed he wanted “to talk a lot more about Sophie Scholl and The White Rose” than about his book.

He started writing the book in 1999, “before some of the drastic changes started to happen,” he said, referring to the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.

One of the first things a reader will notice in the opening chapters of "The Silenced" are the political implications found throughout the book.

“My editors didn’t comment on the political undertones, which was one of the things I was nervous about,” DeVita admitted.

As rampant as political issues appear to be in his book, DeVita said he wasn’t always politically conscious. Only 10 years ago he was angry, jaded and believed his vote didn’t matter. A few years in Spring Green, though, and all that changed.