DANIEL FORD'S BOOKS > POLAND'S DAUGHTER
Poland's Daughter: How I Met Basia, Hitchhiked to Italy, and Learned About Love, War, and Exile
The Second World War -- the worst thing that ever happened. The horror began in September 1939, with Hitler's Wehrmacht invading Poland from the west, while Stalin's Red Army stormed in from the east. Among their victims was a five-year-old named Basia Deszberg. The Russians shot her father and brother in the Katyn Forest massacres, then loaded Basia, her sister, and their mother into a cattle car for a horrific three-week journey to the steppes of Kazakhstan, there to survive as best they could. Over the next eight years, they'd escape through Persia, Lebanon, and Egypt to find safe haven in England.
By contrast, I grew up in a United States mired by the Great Depression. Europe's agony was America's windfall! I went from hardscrabble poverty to a college degree and a fellowship that took me to the English university where Basia was a student. This is the story of our meeting, our travels, and our parting.
"It's an extraordinary book," writes Irene Tomaszewski in Cosmopolitan Review, "highly original, gripping, at once full of joy and of sorrow."
"Read Poland's Daughter and discover ... a chapter of
Poland's story," says Maureen Morris on Amazon.com. "And enjoy the pathos
of this delightful love story."
Poland's Daughter is a trade paperback from Createspace,
6x9 inches, 244 pages, illustrated by photographs and a map.
I'll mail you an autographed copy for retail price plus shipping,
or buy a copy from major online bookstores:
Autographed:
US Media Mail
US Priority Mail
As an e-book, Poland's Daughter is available
from major online bookstores:
Amazon USA
- other Amazon stores
Apple
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Download a chapter
You can download chapter five of Poland's Daughter by clicking on
this link: "The
Road to Italy." It's a PDF file that you can read on your computer
using Adobe Acrobat Reader.
(You probably already have Acrobat Reader on your computer. If not, you can get it from the Adobe website. If you see an "optional offer," feel free to remove the checkmark. These add-ons are rarely helpful and may be a nuisance.)
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Posted February 2019. Websites © 1997-2019 Daniel Ford; all rights reserved.