Counting down to the big launch

Yikes! Only three days and The Golden Daughter will be officially launched. I can't believe it.

My former CBC colleague, and very good friend, Anna Maria Tremonti is flying in to emcee the event at Pier 21 - the Canadian Museum of Immigration - on Sunday.

She helped me realize that my mother’s secret letters, which I found when mama died, told an astonishing and little-known story of the slave workers in Nazi Germany. There were over five million of them.

Mama’s letters led me on an adventure to retrace her footsteps Germany. Then to Northern Ontario to the grave of my birth father. Mama had left him when she ran off with his Polish friend when I was four years old.  And finally to Poland, and the arms of my newly-found family.

The Golden Daughter has been in book stores for just over a month now, but it has already attracted a deal of interest. It's been featured on Global National, on the CBC, and popped up in the Toronto Star's top ten books.

I am delighted and humbled by the feedback I'm getting. Most people said, once they started reading, they couldn’t put the book down.

A recurring theme was summed up by one reader who emailed me: "It is such an incredible story and hard to believe that it happened in such recent times. It’s definitely a story that needs to be told."

Another called it a tour de force: "I could feel your pain and anguish pulsing through the pages and hopefully the catharsis at the end."

Two emails that are especially dear to me came from Poland. One, from a member of my birth father's family, said: "Your Golden Daughter forces us to think about what shapes us and the past that lives within us. It compels us to reflect deeply on people who had the misfortune of living in terrible times. Who would we be, what would we be like, if fate had dealt us such a blow?"

And I also got an email from a member of my step-father Frank Uzarowski's family: "Your book made me realize how difficult these war topics were for people who survived the war. My grandfather was also a forced labourer in Germany. Your book made me decide to look for documents on this subject and find out more."

A big 'thank you' to everyone who has bought and read the book, and taken the time to share some thoughts with me.

PS - a reminder that there are no seats available for the launch on Sunday. The event has been sold out for more than a week now.