Excerpt from Current Project "Epiphany in Lilacs"

I'm currently working on a new manuscript, a novel that's a fictionalized account of my father's experiences in a displaced person's' camp in Germany following the end of World War II. The story starts with my 14-year-old father's arrival in a field hospital in the British zone, then follows him piecing together the fragments of his life as he recovers from dysentery, typhus and starvation while trying to find out if his mother and two sisters are still alive. Along the way, he forges a bond with an older mysterious German and joins a theater troupe but never giving up hope that his family is still out there.

Here's a short excerpt:

"The British had done a yeoman job of cleaning up the damage caused by the bombings; it was a miracle most of the buildings had survived. However, therein lied the paradox: If you were on a train or in car rushing by Neustadt and you cast a fleeting glimpse at the monolithically bleak façade housing the converted barracks, you would swear it was a prison. On the outside, the buildings were uniform and utilitarian in form. Yet, if you stopped for a moment and stepped inside to snag a closer view of what remained of this erstwhile naval base, you would see a thin layer of hope clouding the vision of so many dislocated souls. The DPs were lost, of course, suspended between the horrors of a recent past and the uncertainties of an unknown future, but they were also astonished they survived and were not extinct. And because of that, every day seemed like an epiphany; breathing was an epiphany; nature was an epiphany; Neustadt-Holstein was an epiphany; Doctor Edwardson and Nurse Margaret were epiphanies; even fellow survivors like Jackie and Silka were epiphanies."