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The Power of Secrets
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!
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Determined to chase her dreams, Susi joins a dance troupe, leaving her infant daughter, Maddie, in the care of her mother, Katharina—a resilient woman who has already raised six children, three with different fathers. Six years later, Susi returns, now engaged to an American Army officer. Maddie is taken from her grandmother and adopted to be raised in America.
As Maddie grows, she wrestles with her fractured identity and, decades later, finds her way back to her German roots. Just before her 60th birthday, a shocking confession from her Aunt Sieglinde shatters everything she thought she knew: her beloved grandmother once participated in a Nazi eugenics program that encouraged “racially correct” unions to produce children for Hitler’s vision.
That revelation ignites Maddie’s quest to uncover the truth about her own father—a journey that intertwines generations, secrets, and the unyielding need to belong.
ILLEGITIMATE is the true story of two women who had to uncover the identities of their fathers in order to truly understand themselves.
Little Edna’s War
Little Edna’s War follows the life of Edna Szurek, a young girl whose world collapses when the Germans invade Warsaw in 1939. The book moves through her early childhood in a loving Jewish family, the terror of the bombings, the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the years she survives by hiding, disguising herself, and relying on her wits. It traces her shifting identities, her impossible choices, and her struggle to stay alive as the city around her crumbles. By weaving Edna’s memories with historical detail, the book creates a vivid, painful, and hopeful record of one child’s endurance during the Holocaust.
This was a very emotional book for me. The writing is direct and heartfelt, and I felt pulled into Edna’s world with a force that surprised me. The author keeps the language clean and clear, which makes the fear and confusion in those early scenes even more powerful. I kept pausing, letting the weight of simple moments sink in. A child worrying about getting to a birthday party on time. A sister brushing dust from her eyes after a bombing. A mother trying to hide her terror during Shabbat dinner. These small pieces made the horror feel close and personal, and I found myself dizzy from potent emotions more than once. The story isn’t dressed up with complicated language. It just lets the emotional truth stand on its own, and that honesty worked on me.
I found myself thinking a lot about how identity shifts under pressure. Edna changes names and roles. She becomes a Catholic girl, then a street kid, then a resistance courier. The writing never turns this into a grand point. It shows how a child adapts because she has no other choice. That quiet, matter-of-fact tone made the whole journey feel even more heartbreaking. The book also captures how memory can be both a lifeline and a wound, and I felt that each time Edna reached for a song her mother once sang or tried to remember something about the home she lost. I kept wanting to reach into the pages and steady her. The storytelling brings out that kind of protective instinct.
I was moved by both the writing and the spirit behind it. The book is written with deep care, and you can feel the author’s love for Edna in every scene. I’d recommend this book to readers who want a personal lens on the Holocaust, especially those who connect more with intimate, character-driven stories than with broad historical overviews. It’s also a strong choice for anyone who wants to understand how children survive the unthinkable. It’s painful, yes, but also full of strength, and I’m glad I read it.
Pages: 544 | ASIN : B0FZX3JHYG
