The White Shadow Trilogy
Goodness In Small Doses
A family of Belgian Jews whose child has cerebral palsy flees across France to the Demarcation Line to escape certain death within Nazi occupied Europe. They are helped by a range of individuals with widely different motivations. What made such people carry out acts of courage and generosity in the face of such danger? The novel explores the problem of survival in a world where moral choices have enormous consequences. (Manuscript has been submitted for publication)
Incarnations of Evil
In pre-war Poland leading up to the opening volleys of the Second World War, a family finds itself increasingly compromised within the Nazi propaganda machine. What made ordinary citizens become proponents of genocide? Different members of a Polish family become involved with the Nazi program to different degrees in different ways. One joins the police force, which becomes the Gestapo. A second, an academic, is sympathetic to the Nazi ideas until called upon to act. Their sister is involved in a program which led to the extermination of people with disability. The novel traces the moral choices they were called upon to make. (First draft of manuscript completed as of November 2018.)
These White Shadows
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In our contemporary world, few people spend time thinking about the Second World War - as a world culture, we have largely "turned the page". However, the simple fact of the Holocaust has changed fundamentally how we view humanity. Furthermore, most families still have scars from the Second World War - secrets or stories that are not shared outside of the family itself. The existence of these secrets and stories are sometimes called "White Shadows" - they still exert a powerful influence over contemporary life. In this novel. a group of people in contemporary Montreal attempts to trace back the origins of their own White Shadows, with dramatic consequences for their lives. (Manuscript in early stages of writing.)
[N.B. We are also creating a co-creation site called the White Shadows and War Initiative