Shades of Betrayal - The origins of my book

 A few years ago, I retired from a professional career and moved from Toronto to a small town in Ontario. Immediately I involved myself with many activities such as joining various clubs, activities and writing a Blog.
One day I posted a blog “Wedding Dress” about my mother’s wedding dress made from a parachute that my father, an underground soldier, secretly saved during WWII.
The readers of my blog loved the story and an idea crossed my mind to write a book loosely based on the origins of the dress. 
In the next few days, I registered at a local collage for a Creative Writing Course and started researching material for my book and sketching the plot. I did not want it to be another book about war atrocities, death and killing fields. In my mind the book would be about ordinary peoples’ lives, love, survival and resistance during WWII.
The story line would be loosely based on my parents’ lives enhanced by fictional characters.
In 2018 my mother was 91 years old and still had a great memory, especially about events from the past. Although I knew many facts about my parents’ and family lives prior to and during the war, I needed to delve deeper into the atmosphere, mood and feelings during the dark times of WWII. Sadly, my father has been deceased for number of years and I did not have his personal detailed recollection of his life when he was a young boy in Poland.
During my many visits to Poland, I spent hours with my mother and her older sister sharing the details of their and their friends’ young lives. I listened and recorded everything as they went over the same events many times. Time was running out for them and every memory shared with me was precious to all of us.
In 1946 the parachute saved by my father was used to make my mother’s wedding dress. It was a beautiful dress according to my mother, a dream not attainable to many in war-devasted Poland. After WWII there was a rush of weddings and many young brides wore my mother dress for their weddings. It was called the “Dress from Heaven”.
Here we are more then two years after the “Wedding Dress” blog first appear, and after much blood, sweat and tears – and a great deal of research – the book is completed! Yay! 
“Shades of Betrayal” will be available at the beginning of 2022.
Below are photographs of my mother in her wedding dress, my father during the war and my mother and I during my last visit before she passed on peacefully in January 2020.