DEBUT BOOK COMING SPRING 2026

Secrets shape not only those who guard them but also those who inherit them – and sometimes they shape the stories an entire nation tells about itself.

For most of her life, Alice was mortified by her Polish immigrant parents—their accents, their old-world ways, the recess snacks that made her different. She wanted nothing more than to escape that immigrant background and life in small-town Ontario. By adulthood, she had succeeded—but in doing so, she had also learned almost nothing about her parents' past.

That changed when her elderly father broke the decades of silence in the last years of his life. What followed was a determined search through archives and historical records to uncover her parents’ hidden wartime past—a journey that revealed not just her family’s remarkable survival stories, but a broader tragedy that touched every Polish family, where 2.7 million Polish Christians died alongside three million Polish Jews, yet their stories remained largely untold for decades.

Intimate, ordinary and shocking details across three lives, two continents and several decades paint the landscape of Family Secrets—a memoir that weaves together investigative historical research with deeply personal storytelling, exploring how secrets shape both those who guard them and those who inherit them. Written with the skill of a detective and the heart of a daughter, this is a powerful story about learning to honour immigrant roots once rejected, and what we owe both our parents and history itself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

What readers are saying

  • "Your writing is so real, visceral, immediate, I feel like I am visiting your home. Thank you for sharing the moving and frequently painful stories of your parents. You honour and love them through your writing."

    - JENNIFER HOFFMANN, TORONTO

  • "I’m very grateful to you for your courage and honesty, the way you brought your mother and father back. Their stories seem deeply relevant to what we’re going through at this moment. History, it turns out, is not a storybook. It includes the real suffering of real people. There’s so much to learn from what you’ve written. "

    - SUSIE KAUFMAN, MINNESOTA

  • "It is crucial that these stories be told, and history remembered. Beautiful work. "

    - DR PETER NEWMAN, TORONTO

  • "This is a heartfelt tribute to your parents and a reflection on their history that holds much significance for our times."

    - ELAINE KALMAN, MONTREAL

  • "Thank you mille fois for your beautifully written, emotionally brave, and historically informative work. "

    - MARCI KEATS RUDOLPH, HALIFAX

  • "A fascinating, poignant story about the evolution and growth of a young girl, who longed to be anyone but an immigrant girl from a small town to a mature, educated woman who immersed herself in the history of wartime Poland to fill the gaps of her family's history. What she unearthed was the incredible story of her mother and father surviving the evil of Nazism in wartime Poland... Everyone interested in family history will appreciate this unique memoir. "

    - DR. RICHARD C. LUKAS, POLISH-AMERICAN HISTORIAN

Book Launch
Spring 2026

More to come