Like Embers In The Night by Andrew Goliszek
A little bit about Author Andrew Goliszek…
I’m a retired college professor who has taught for 30 years and am continuing to write both fiction and nonfiction books. While a professor, I had developed a writing course for biology students, which is still being used as a requirement for the biology department. I have been writing for 40 years.
This is Author Andrew Goliszek’s writing and publication journey in his own words…
Inspiration to start writing…
I started to write because I always loved books and wanted to do something creative. I began by writing nonfiction science and health-related books and eventually turned to fiction. My recent book, Like Embers in the Night, was inspired by the true story of my parents and sister who spent years in Soviet gulags and Siberian labor camps where millions died, while they survived.
Andrew’s works…
Rivers of the Black Moon, a medical thriller about the origin of HIV and why some in government and the pharmaceutical industry would do anything to keep that secret
Like Embers In The Night Blurb
During Stalin’s brutal reign of terror, Janek, a Polish soldier, and his wife, Wanda, endure the horrors of Soviet labor camps and Siberian gulags as World War II rages across Europe. While millions perish, they endure the invasion of Poland by Germany and Russia and then miraculously survive mass deportations, imprisonment, torture, and starvation.
Broken both physically and emotionally by their near-death experiences and the unspeakable atrocities of dictatorships and of war, Janek and Wanda are reunited seven years after he marched off to defend his country. They must begin a new life and try to forget the many scars of their past, but where? And can they ever truly forget all that happened to them while they were apart…
Andrew’s favourite scene from Like Embers In The Night…
Slumped almost lifelessly against the tufts of her chair, Wanda stared out an open window overlooking a lovely garden. Warm August rains had colored the grounds with a sea of vibrant flowers, their scent filling her room like a bouquet, though she barely noticed. Occasionally, even the most insignificant events would trigger memories from a time long gone: a soft whisper, a faint smell, the delicate warmth of a child’s breath against her face, the soothing melody of a Mozart sonata. It was at those moments that Wanda would waken from her darkness and, with a look of fear spreading across her face, remember her family in Radom, who had no idea that a hundred miles south, the skies rained gray with the ashes of a thousand souls. On most days, they hardly detected the grainy soot around them, or even witnessed an evening sunset because the five incinerators in Auschwitz burned bodies day and night. Before long, everyone in Radom simply got used to it—a lingering grit that filled the air and settled upon the smallest things: a blade of grass, a delicate flower, a pat of butter spread on toast, a tongue that flicked unconsciously to rid itself of a strange and fleshy taste that hours earlier had been someone’s husband or wife.
To survive six years of the two most brutal regimes in modern history was not only unlikely, it was truly a miracle. But amongst the ashes and smoldering ruins, broken lives and unspeakable horrors of war, miracles did happen; survivors who’d lived to tell their children of war and gulags, of victors and unlikely heroes, trying in vain to forget the shocking cruelty of a world that had taken everything they had from them, living their lives in the shadows as if no one else in the world cared. It’s said that these heroes are like embers in the night, glowing brilliantly in the darkest moments of history, forever changing the course of humanity, and then, just as suddenly, vanishing as distant memories fade and the world forgets what ordinary men and women did when hope was gone and all seemed lost.
