Prosper (War Shadows: Book 1) SAMPLE

Foreward: War Shadows

Growing up, I had the blessing of growing up in a family that loved history, especially family history. My grandparents had binders and binders full of stories, pictures, and documents telling the story of where our family has been. The stories we had mostly involved our pioneer ancestors, who went west to escape religious persecution, but there was one story that interested me the most: the story of my great grandpa, Vear Jenson. He'd been a bomber navigator during World War Two, which I'd loved even back then. It probably interested me so much because we just didn't know that much about what he'd did: we'd known that he'd flown missions on D-day, had to bail out at some point, but otherwise, we didn't know a thing. He didn't like talking about it, and even when he wanted to talk, his wife, Betty, would say that she didn't want to hear about it. Nobody really talked about it until after Vear died, which was about when I heard about everything. Since we didn't have any official records about what he'd done, I started researching to see exactly what sort of things happened to downed airmen in France. And that's how I stumbled across the amazing stories of the men and women of the French Resistance. And other resistance networks throughout occupied Europe.

And, right around the time 9th grade rolled about, I had an English teacher tell me the thing that would inspire me to write this series. When we were just about to start reading Elie Weisel's autobiography "Night", she had us all watch a video showing some of the horrible images of the German occupation. Before we started, she told us that she was aware of how hard it would be for some of us to watch this, but reminded us that looking away wouldn't make the harsh reality go away.

And so, after that, and hearing Elie Weisel's wise words "Forgetting the dead would be akin to killing them a second time", I decided that it was time to find these undiscovered stories of these forgotten heroes. Each book in this series will feature a facet of the resistance networks of Europe, and don't need to be read in order to be fully appreciated. Hopefully, I'll be able to inspire more people to find these forgotten stories, and together, we can keep these true heroes from dying a second time.