The Changeling of the Third Reich

SYNOPSIS:  The year is 1968, and the Vietnam War is in full swing.  Dr. Bridget Castle, a neurosurgeon in Boston, handles the victims of anti-war protests, the casualties of war, and the stress of being a woman in a male-dominated profession with ease.  Her husband, her parents, and her patients all love and respect her, but her tight-knit world is in danger of unraveling when someone from her past shows up and threatens to expose her closest-held secret: that she is a Concentration Camp survivor.

For more than twenty-three years, Bridget has walked in the shoes of a girl killed in the Blitz, blurring the line of when her own identity as a German Jew ended and when she assumed the role of changeling.  If not for her childhood diary to remind her of all she endured, she would be completely successful in taking on the memories of the girl she replaced.  But when the son of a Nazi soldier is placed in her care, she finds herself unable to deny her past any longer.

The last time Bridget had to stare into the face of evil, she learned, despite losing everything, just how strong she was.  Now that the ghosts of her past have awakened, will she be strong enough to avenge the life that was stolen from her?

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Word Count: 95,000
First Draft: November 1, 2019 – December 8, 2019
Status: Coming Soon
Genre: Psychological Thriller

HISTORY:  In February, 2014, I had the idea for this story, but was in the midst of so many other projects, I set it aside.  I knew this would require an exceptional amount of research, and I wanted to be able to give it my full attention.  For years, I looked forward to getting to this story, but due to lupus complications, I wasn’t able to commit to the time it would take to research.  In 2019, as NaNoWriMo approached, I happened to visit the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.  While this wasn’t nearly as expansive as the National Holocaust Museum in D.C. that I visited many years ago, it had a personal tour guide who answered questions and discussed many aspects of Concentration Camp survivors and their ordeals for more than two hours.  It was exactly the push I needed to declare this as my NaNoWriMo project. I finished NaNoWriMo with 81,100 words under my belt and finished the first draft a week later on December 8, 2019.

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