“The untold stories of the past show us who we are—and what we have left to heal.”‍

—Dr. Annette Callis

Who would have thought that an Orange County historian on NPR would change my life—and inspire me to write my first novel?

In 2024, I discovered that nearly half a million prisoners of war were brought to the United States during World War II and confined in hundreds of camps. One 15-acre camp in Garden Grove, California, housed 1,100 men and stood only blocks from a home I once owned, yet no historical marker identifies the site. The prisoners were transported daily to pick oranges at the Villa Park Orchards, up the road from where I live today, while my office overlooked the site of another POW camp—now the Orange County Fairgrounds.

The realization that this largely forgotten history had unfolded all around me took root in my imagination, and the story of a German POW and an American nurse was born.