For Maria, by Bruce Judisch (OakTara)

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Great news! (Well, for me, anyway...) J I've heard from my editor and For Maria, the sequel to Katia, is scheduled for publication in May of this year. Here's what the story's about:

December, 1939: The Gestapo haul Izaak and Maria Szpilmann away to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, leaving their twin infant daughters behind to die. But the twins do not die. Rescued by a neighbor couple, Gustaw and Ròsa Dudek, they escape occupied Poland to Salzburg, Austria. They are not heard from again.

Today: Maria Szpilmann has survived Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen. She is now grandmother to Madeline Sommers, a young journalist who, despite the odds, passionately clings to the belief that the lost twins are still alive. She makes it her single-focused mission to find and reunite them with her failing grandmother before it’s too late.

For Maria took a year and a half of research-intensive, emotionally exhausting work—work that has changed this author in ways he's still discovering. It is offered in honor of those survivors of the Kindertransport, children who, from 1934-1945, were rescued from the clutches of the Nazis and spirited away to foreign lands to await reunions with their families. Most of those reunions never took place. Some of those survivors the author as had the unlimited joy of befriending. Others he wishes he could.

But most of all, the book is dedicated to the 1.5 million children who did not escape The Shoah, what most of us know as the Holocaust. May their memories be preserved.
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