Sorting through her parents belongings after their deaths, Joanie Holzer Schirm discovered an extraordinary lost world. Hand-written on faded and brittle stationary, stamped by censors and military authorities, and neatly filed in those two lacquered boxes, were 400 letters from 78 correspondents-along with carbon copies of the letters her Czech father had sent to them during World War II. The paths Joanie Schirm then followed beyond the letters made clear that guilt and grief continued to wound and sometimes cripple those who remained, long after the war was over.
Madeleine Albright commented on the book: “Adventurers Against Their Will is a brilliant and compelling account of men and women caught in the turbulence of war. Part insightful history and part family drama, the book leads readers on a journey into the past, answering many questions and posing new ones along the way. Joanie Schirm has made a fresh and vital contribution to our understanding of World War II’s impact on the lives of people in Central Europe.”
In English and Czech.
