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

“Shout for Freedom”

A memory from the Velvet Revolution – Twenty-Five years ago – Czechoslovakia, November, 1989

I have a memory that embodies the emotions I felt when my dad’s native land, Czechoslovakia, recovered their freedom. After forty-one years of communist rule, in what is now known as the “Velvet Revolution,” a brave country shouted for freedom and would not be denied.

The TV news broadcasts in late November 1989 weren’t constant like they are today. To know what stories were breaking worldwide, you had to wait patiently until the evening reports. For weeks, my dad followed anything and everything that was about his countrymen sitting on the cusp of regaining freedom.

As I lived over an hour away from my parents’ Indialantic, Florida home, my father and I spoke often by telephone during those weeks speculating what might happen next. His voice filled with excitement and apprehension as the world looked on. His similar hopes for freedom had been dashed some twenty years earlier when his remaining Czech family and friends thought the communists were easing their tight hold. Back then, he’d eventually watched television images of Soviet tanks filling Prague’s streets.

But in the fall of 1989 he assured me, “This is different. There is a chance.” My dad had the right to speculate. He’d been forced in to being a stateless citizen in 1939 when the Nazis occupied his homeland and the Czechs lost their democratic state.  He first found safe harbor in China before making his way to the USA.  I know now following WWII that my parents in 1947 considered a move from America with their young family to Czechoslovakia. Dad wrote a letter to his Aunt Valla saying he wanted to return and practice medicine. She tried to dissuade him. She told him things weren’t the same as before WWII. “You will do better to remain in the U.S.”   I still think had the communist party not taken over the Czechoslovak government in early 1948, my parents would have moved there. Perhaps there never would have been a ‘me’. I was born in Florida in December 1948 after Dad and Mom decided to stay free in America.

So as the Velvet Revolution unfolded in 1989, I stayed glued to television reports. My heart was in my throat, hoping on Dad’s next visit to his homeland he would find his relatives living in freedom, in a country returned to democracy!   When the moment arrived with over 200,000 people celebrating in Prague’s Wenceslas Square, I was won over by the humanity of the people. I marched down to the Orlando Sentinel’s newspaper office and asked if I could purchase news photos from Prague.

Over the next few days I kept returning. Each time the Sentinel made good on their offer to share powerful Associated Press wire photos hot off the press. Every AP photo grabbed my attention. One was titled “Shout for Freedom.” The long cold war had ended with little bloodshed. Days later, I had the pictures framed and gave them to my dad with a plaque that simply reads “Freedom.” As if it were yesterday, I remember the moment I handed it to him. I recall my dad’s slow forming smile and his voice cracking as he simply said, “Why do some images reach inside us?”