Although Love, Faith, and the Dented Bullet is a work of fiction, I want to assure the reader that the work was carefully researched. The information cited in the novel about the Warsaw Ghetto and Treblinka came from many books, articles, and survivors’ interviews and testimonials that I compiled and then verified. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was an invaluable resource. I also visited many other Holocaust museums over many years in both the United States and Canada. For example, I was horrified when I read, in a Canadian museum, about a Jewish Holocaust survivor who tried to reclaim his home after the war. After experiencing so much pain and loss, this survivor just wanted to return home and live in peace; however, the family that had confiscated his property did not want to give it up and shot at him and told him never to return. I could not forget this story, and it found its way into my novel.
Why does the world need Holocaust novels so many years after World War II? Because there still are Holocaust deniers. Despite the fact that the Germans kept careful records of the atrocities they committed, there are people who claim that the Nazis did not purposefully kill millions of civilians. We do know the truth. The Nazis killed 6 million Jews. They also murdered an additional 6 million people from other groups: Gypsies, Serbs, people with disabilities, Soviet prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and political dissidents. There is a need for Holocaust stories because the staggering numbers of people killed may jolt the brain but may be too overwhelming to register appropriately and touch the heart. When a character you have come to care for in a Holocaust story dies, he means something to you. He is not just one of a large nebulous number. You pause and feel the pain of this one death and then begin to fully comprehend the magnitude of millions of deaths.
I wrote a gentle multicultural romance to balance my protagonist Jacob’s tragic World War II story. I learned that there once was a kosher chicken plant in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It no longer exists. I created a similar fictional plant, within walking distance of the city, to give Jacob, a kosher butcher, a logical reason to move to Lancaster where he could meet and fall in love with Anna. I am grateful to my Mennonite neighbors who shared their life stories with me. They also told me about their mothers’ and grandmothers’ post World War II lives. The information in the book related to the Mennonites and their religious beliefs is based on my interviews and the many books I read about this religious group. Lancaster County has become known for its Amish community, but there are actually more Mennonites living in the county than Amish. I wanted to pay homage to the local Mennonites’ strong ties to their families, farms, and churches in this novel.