I believe the cover of Padlocked is the most beautiful of any of my book covers. It was not AI-generated or enhanced. The photograph, taken by Willie Forde Photography, shows the Smiling Bess Gate in Ireland during an otherworldly Northern Lights display, and Willie graciously allowed us to use it for the book cover.
There is significance to the gate. Padlocked begins on January 27, 1945, when six characters converge for the liberation of Auschwitz: two photojournalists, a camp guard and her sister, a Nazi collaborator, and a nurse. When a grenade is detonated by a fleeing guard, several find themselves on the other side, where they encounter a padlocked gate and angels guarding it.
They discover that they must review their lives before they are allowed to pass through the gate, and the book then returns to 1939 as Nazi Germany invades Poland.
The two photojournalists, an American and a Spaniard, are caught between two armies as Germany advances, and over the next six years, they encounter twists and turns that leave them embedded in turn with the Polish, Nazi, and Red Armies.
The two teenage sisters are separated in Warsaw during the Nazi siege. When one is deported to a camp in southern Poland, the other crosses the country to find and free her.
A young man becomes a Nazi collaborator and rises to gain power over life and death, while a nurse joins the Polish Underground Resistance in an attempt to save her country.
Each will discover that every decision they made placed them further along specific paths, and only their souls can open the padlocked gate to reveal the destination within.