My new novel, Refugee from Paradise is a fictional diary loosely based on my own experiences as a Hungarian refugee in England after World War II. The diary starts as 15-year old Penny Kiss struggles with life as an English schoolgirl dealing with the breakup of her family, her father's imprisonment in a communist prison, and the tragedy of Hungary. "Paradise" is the dream of her childhood in her native country, in stark contrast to the nightmare of Hungary—what communist propaganda called "the workers' paradise." She has left behind life in a totalitarian state, but not the fear and real dangers of communist infiltration. She often feels like someone who is forced to carry on a polite conversation at a picnic on the beach while her family is drowning in the lake.
The diary reflects Penny's life through school, college and her first years of teaching in an English school. It follows her as she tries to tackle the human toll imposed on the world by totalitarian thinking. Her mother and stepfather Uncle Ed warn her to guard against communist spies who could hurt her father in Hungary, but she is attracted to a strange young man who may be a double agent. the story ends with the wonder and tragedy the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
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