In ILLEGITIMATE, you share with readers your personal journey to find truth, identity, and peace as you search for your biological father and your family’s ties to the Lebensborn program in Nazi Germany. What inspired you to share your story with others?

This is a question I had to ask myself for three years before I decided to put pen to paper. After all, some of my aunts and my uncle were still alive and well, and this is certainly not a happy subject to chit-chat about. I was transparent with them in my interest to write a book and received minimal pushback from only one of my cousins. My aunt certainly helped when she emphatically stated, “I want the truth to be known!” That is the power of secrets: they always want to be revealed.

You write powerfully about feeling unwanted and unclaimed as a child. How did you approach writing those early emotional experiences?

I realized a long time ago that good things can come out of bad experiences, and I believe my sense of independence and perseverance was developed out of a desperate desire for inner joy. It has to be innate, not provided by others.

Did you feel a sense of responsibility in telling this part of history through your family’s experience?

Most certainly! I suppose that’s why it took almost ten years of researching, writing, rewriting, rewriting, rewriting… I needed for the story to roll easily off my tongue as I read it to myself. Any pauses or stops in a paragraph required scrutiny, hence all the revisions. It paid off; my family has been very supportive and complimentary, even those who were cast in a not-so-pleasant light.

Do you feel a sense of closure, or is this an ongoing process?

I feel a type of closure. I understand and can empathize with my mother and her choices, as well as my father, who had his options taken away from him, my aunt, and her strength to accept herself for what she was, the additional quirks of other family members, and all things that went undiscussed. The most amazing closure came from my late-in-life relationship with my father. I am very much like him, and that was amazing, because I had never found any similarities with my mother. It was a DNA confirmation! I can certainly understand why adoptees feel the need to find their biological parent(s). My one huge regret is that my mother passed away in 2013, and I never had a chance to tell her I now understood her choices—how healing that would have been for both of us!

Author Links: Goodreads | Facebook | Website | Amazon