Look and Listen

Biography

I was born in Vienna and escaped from Hitler ... but you'll read all about it in my memoir, Becoming Alice. Immigrant years in Portland were tough, especially because of my Dad's autocratic ways. Got to California and started to become the Alice I was meant to be in the first place. A masters degree in Social Welfare was followed with work as a medical social worker. Then I married, raised three children and eventually experienced the "empty nest" syndrome. I solved that problem by spending several fun-filled years as a travel consultant escorting groups to exotic foreign destinations. At about the time that career ran its course, I was bitten by the writing bug. It has been a passion ever since.

Inspiration

It all began with my teenage grandson's assignment for his high school history class. He was asked to choose an event that occured in the twentieth century that changed the course of history. It could be anything, such as the development of TV or Airplane Travel, or Social Security, etc. He chose the Holocaust. And he was to interview a person familiar with that subject. That was me. This all came as a surprise to me. I don't talk much about those early years. Not that they are a secret, but I've worked hard to become an American that I don't go back there to those times very often. My son-in-law came to drop my grandson off at my house and planned to go to the golf course to hit some balls ... to avoid litening to what he thought would be a very boring interview ...and then return to pick him up. Well, an hour and a half later, when my grandson and I finally finished the interview, my son-in-law was still standing next to us, holding his golf clubs, listening to my story. When he got home, he told my daughter that it was so interesting that he never got to the golf course. All that got me thinking. How about all the other grandchildren, and perhaps some of my friends? Would they also not be interested in all that happened so long ago? Since I could not give them each such an interview, I decided to write it down. But I wanted it not to be a list of facts. I wanted it to be a STORY! I wanted it to be INTERESTING! I wanted it to read like fiction. And so I took some writing courses, went to writers workshops, read my material to several groups, and found they, too, were fascinated by the story. What started out to be a legacy for my family, ended up a book on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, iUniverse.com, and is stocked in several independent book stores and in three local (southern California)Barnes and Noble bookstores. Hope you, too, will enjoy it.