Tag: Stolen Child

lovely letter

Hello Marsha,

My name is T, and I would like to tell you this wonderful story.

My mother had given a copy of your book, Nobody’s Child, to my teenage children about a year ago. Being an Armenian, and having read many books based on the Armenian Genocide, I was curious about the information contained in this little book. As I read it over the past summer, I fell in love with it and immediately got and read Daughter of War. I was amazed at finding all the delicate, small but important details in those two books, things that I had not seen in the many books I had come across before.

In our school district for 10th grade English class the children have to choose a book from a list of books, representing conflicts in the history of different nations, and write a research paper on that subject as well as present it to the rest of the class.

Last year, with my daughter being in that class, she wished to do her paper and presentation about the Armenian Genocide.
Since she had not yet read any books on this subject, and there were no books about this in the class list, I suggested Nobody’s Child and the teacher approved. She did an excellent job with both the paper and the power point presentation, scoring a perfect grade plus extra credits. We were thrilled with this; but there was more to come.

The teacher had liked the book and added it to the list. This meant that as of January 2011, for years to come, every 10th grader in our district will be told the true facts of the Armenian Genocide, based on your book.

Thank you for a beautiful book.

T

I am holding Stolen Child!

I was thrilled to receive my first advance copy of Stolen Child in the mail yesterday. It was an emotional roller coaster to write this novel. It was inspired by my late mother-in-law’s WWII memories in Ukraine.

The novel will be coming out on Feb 1, 2010.

Here’s a bit more about the book:

In an effort to boost the birth rate of the master race, the Nazis instituted a frightening program called Lebensborn (the Fount of Life). SS soldiers were encouraged to breed with females deemed to be of racially valuable stock. Some were German, others were women and girls of captive nations and in 1942, an even more sinister aspect of the Lebensborn program was established. The Nazis believed that there were lost seeds of the Aryan nation amidst the Slavs. In an effort to reclaim these supposed lost Germans, children were stolen from their parents and shipped to Lebensborn homes for further testing and brainwashing.

In Stolen Child, Marsha Skrypuch imagines the story of twelve-year-old Nadia Krawchuk, who has immigrated with her parents to Canada, but her re-location triggers disturbing dreams and ultimately vivid memories of another family and a girl she recalls as Gretchen. This is a powerful, moving and disturbing tale of one of the lesser known horrors of Hitler’s racial obsession.

And an excerpt:

Dark shadows dance on the scuffed white walls. Someone else’s fingernail scratches are etched around the glass doorknob and there are tiny splinters of wood fraying from the door itself. For a few trembling moments I look out at the dirt-trampled snow far below my window. Why am I a prisoner in this house?

My throat is raw from screaming, and my fingernails are bloodied from scrabbling at the doorknob. I lie on the wooden floor and stare up at the bare lightbulb. I can hear nothing but my own gasping breaths.

Shuffling. A struggle. A child screams down the hallway. A door slams shut.

Another stolen child.