Those who know me well know that I am a deeply spiritual person.
And sometimes, God has different plans for me. When I finished with The Misremembered Lighthouse, I planned to return to another story. Instead, I dreamed an entire, highly complex book in one night in vivid detail.
The next morning, I prayed and asked God that if I was meant to write this book, how could I possibly remember every detail? And I heard His answer as clear as day. “You won’t remember it, but I will.”
“Padlocked” is an epic historical novel unlike any story I have ever written. It takes place against the backdrop of Nazi Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland. It follows the lives of a group of ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Two foreign photojournalists are trapped between armies at Festungsfront Oder-Warthe-Bogen, along Poland’s western border with Germany. A young woman is separated from her sister in Warsaw as the Nazis encircle it and navigates her war-torn country in search of her. A young man joins the Jungdeutsche Partei, or the Young German Party, and rises to a position where he can dictate life or death, while a nurse joins the Armia Krajowa, or Polish Underground Resistance.
While they don’t know one another at the start of their journeys, each will make decisions that have the power to transform them and place them on paths that ultimately converge on January 27, 1945. It is on that date that the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front opened the gates to Auschwitz-Birkenau for all the world to see.
This is a story about the strength of love, courage, faith, and resilience in the face of unimaginable hatred and obsession with power.