Books

Come Play With My Friends...

When writers publish their work, they're inviting you to come play with their imaginary friends. My debut novel takes place in December, 1968, and is a gripping tale of family, survival, secrets, loss, love, growth, and hope. Each subsequent book continues shortly after the one before it left off. The protagonist, Dr. Bridget Castle, is a brilliant neurosurgeon in the late 1960s, a time which wasn't welcoming to women in certain professions. With the Vietnam War in full swing, throughout any given day, the things she is apt to encounter -- a word, a smell, an altercation -- are triggers that might bring about a flash flood of memories of when she was a prisoner in three different concentrations camps.

While Dr. Castle and her friends and family are fictional, the events surrounding her life are very real and have been researched in such a way as to portray them as accurate. Because we've reached a point in time when the last of the Holocaust survivors are dwindling, it's more important than ever for the world to remember all they endured. When concentration camps were being liberated in the mid-1940s, people were expected to be happy they were freed and get on with their lives. The entire generation of participants in World War II was taught to "shove their feelings deep down and forget about them." Soldiers came home with what was called "shell shock," and often, they found silent comfort in a liquor bottle. When Vietnam War vets started coming home with "battle fatigue," times had changed, and it was more acceptable to talk about one's feelings and seek help. But it wasn't until the 1980s that medical communities used PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) as a diagnosis. However, while new cases of PTSD were popping up all over the place, society as a whole, while embracing this "new diagnosis" and comforting its newest victims, forgot to look back to their parents and grandparents who were still suffering silently with the mental scars of all they'd witnessed and endured.

Because it's incredibly heart-wrenching to read only of the dismal details surrounding the lives of those who were imprisoned during the Holocaust, I've filled each book with lovable characters, action, nostalgia, mystery, drama, hope, and even occasional injections of humor. Come play with my imaginary friends. I think you'll really like them, and you might just learn something along the way.