As a non-fiction author, it’s particularly meaningful when you have a chance to connect live with readers who’ve had the experience to “meet” your real life characters. This opportunity recently happened for me when I got an email invitation to attend a long standing book club who’d read Adventurers Against Their Will.  I was in the midst of completing the manuscript for my second book, My Dear Boy, so we scheduled the meeting for two months hence.  That night arrived in March 2016. Here’s the email feedback I received following the evening.  It turns out it was as magical a night for me as it apparently was for them!

Dear Joanie,

…Words can’t even begin to express how special you made our book club gathering.  I know the rest of the ladies were as awed as I was that you brought your Dad’s pants that he was wearing when he escaped.  They bring such a reality to the discussion of your great book.  I get “chills” every time I think of all the “synchronicities” that happened and still happen as you bring “The Adventurers” stories to more and more people.

I have received so many emails from the Book Club ladies and believe me when I say they are still ecstatic about your presentation last evening.  Your genuineness in sharing and all the visuals you presented added an extra layer of understanding to the complexities and realities of “The Adventurers” lives.  The ladies will be talking about this for a long, long time.  As many of them have mentioned, this was the highlight of our 14 years together as a book club.  And, needless to say, we are all looking forward to the release of your next book.

And, I must tell you, I was flooded with many happy memories as I collected and made the recipes for the Czech dishes that I so enjoyed throughout my childhood.  Traditions are what connect us to our heritage.  How blessed we are that we can make this happen.

Thank you again for a very special evening for all of us.

Fondly, Fran

Joanie Holzer Schirm signing Prague’s Triton publishing company contract for Adventurers Against Their Will to be in Czech language. March 2014

As I held my pen to sign this Triton publishing agreement, words from my 1992 Walt Disney World Dreamers and Doers Award came to mind:

Somehow I can’t believe there are any heights that can’t be scaled by someone who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special criteria, it seems to me, can be summarized in Four C’s. They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy…and the greatest of these is confidence. When you believe a thing, believe it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably – Walt Disney

Unquestionably, my father’s life story and the contents of his treasure trove of WWII letters are a hymn without sentimentality to the magnificence of the human spirit.  The evergreen lessons they relay about protecting human dignity are meant to be heard across the globe. From English, to Czech, to who-knows-where next – we must keep and preserve all that is known in trust for those who come after us.

The small beginnings of this story began some seventy-five years ago when my father was displaced in 1939 from his Nazi-occupied Czech homeland to China. There, he sat at various desks in Shanghai, Tsingtao (Qingdao), Tientsin (Tianjin), Ping Ting Hsien (Pingding County), and Peking (Beijing), writing letters to his friends and family about what was happening to him. On occasion, surrounded by raging typhus epidemics, he observed bloody battles between Chinese and Japanese armies. Next, he found himself in the midst of cultured conversations at the finest hospital in the Orient. As a physician serving Chinese patients, he worried about his own family and friends who were trapped behind in Nazi-territory or displaced like he somewhere in the war-torn world. His gripping experiences throughout China seemed endless.

Somehow in the midst of turmoil, he saved 400 letters from 78 friends and relatives. He kept them safe to store away after the war – only to be discovered upon his death. So now it seems fitting that Adventurers Against Their Will, about seven of his correspondents and the magnificence of the human spirit, would be published in my dad’s native tongue.  Sometime in 2015, Triton Publishing company of Prague will display the results of this foreign rights agreement to produce the book in Czech.

A special thank you goes to Prague’s Jana Gigov and Lenka Svobodova for elucidating what I’ve written in English to make this Czech-language publishing dream come true.  Na zdraví!

And to all you writers who wish to have your book reach a global market… this serves as a reminder to pay homage to Walt’s secret “Four C’s.”  Big dreams can come true!