Books
From young adult historical fiction, to a practical cultural and etiquette guide, to a dystopian series that explores the role that self righteousness plays in conflict, my books will inform you, challenge you, and invite you to contemplate what makes us human.
The Weaver’s Scar
Winner, Skipping Stones Honor Award
Winner, Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers
The Weaver’s Scar is a powerful young adult novel about a boy’s escape from the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Faustin, a gifted runner, is thrust into violence as ethnic tensions explode and his family is killed. Relying on courage and an unlikely ally, he fights to survive, revealing both the brutality of division and the resilience of the human spirit.
Royal Fireworks Press, 2013
Culture Smart! Rwanda
Known as the “Land of a Thousand Hills,” Rwanda offers stunning landscapes, from Nyungwe’s chimpanzees to Akagera’s lions and rhinos. Its rich culture includes tea, coffee, basket weaving, drumming, and Intore dance. Kigali is a fast-growing, modern capital. Rwandans are welcoming and proud of their heritage. Visitors who engage more deeply will discover not just beauty, but meaningful connections and lasting friendships.
Former Amazon Category Bestseller
Kuperard Press, 2019
Four prisoners plan an escape from the Nazi death camp that the prisoners nick-named Himmelweg—the Path to Heaven. After stealing some weapons and sabotaging the camp's electricity, the prisoners set fire to the barracks. The SS assaults a traitor, leading to the revealing that he has access to the camp's armory. He supplies the committee with weapons, and one frigid winter morning, the revolt begins.
Epic Press, 2016 Through the Wire
The US Air Force sends Russ Eckhart, a reconnaissance pilot, on a mission over German-occupied Poland to verify rumors of a German death camp. After his plane crashes, Russ is discovered by partisans who recruit him to help with sabotage, demolition, and an assassination.
Epic Press, 2016Rumors from the East
Epic Press, 2016The Simmering Inferno
Józef joins an underground movement smuggling weapons and kerosene into the Jewish ghetto in central Poland. When Germans march in, the resistance strikes, but the Germans capture Józef making him lose more than just his freedom.
Epic Press, 2016 Screams in the Night
Two Polish farmers, Otto and Julia, discover a hidden Nazi death camp in a forest near their farm. Trying to get food and water to the prisoners in transit, their plan begins to fall apart in unforeseen ways.
A student in France, Eric unwittingly joins the French Resistance movement, printing counterpropaganda, sabotaging German vehicles, and supplying explosives to other Resistance fighters. Betrayed, Eric is arrested by the Gestapo who place him on a train bound for the infamous Himmelweg.
Epic Press, 2016Train to Nowhere
Epic Press, 2016The Path to Heaven
Himmelweg burns, grenades explode, and machine guns fire as Julia,Eric, Józef, and Russ escape. While Julia and Eric are hidden and then denounced by a Polish priest, Russ and Eric join the Red Army to fight the Nazis.
On his sixteenth birthday, the Ætherian Rex Himmel learns that he is special--but no one will tell him why. Ordered by Ætheria's leader to join the militaristic Ætherian Cover Force, Rex soon finds himself involved in an investigation of several mysterious, frozen Cthonian bodies that have been discovered in Ætheria. Just as his team finds a reason for the bodies' appearance, Ætheria's power plant is destroyed in a violent attack from below.
Epic Press, 2018The Shroud of Ætheria
Sent by their command to the Ætherians' water-extraction site, a group of ten Cthonian scouts travels for days across the desert. Their mission: to find water for their drought-afflicted civilization. When a reconnaissance team joins them, the Cthonians send scouts up to Ætheria through an access pipe to request water while wells are being dug. But when two of the scouts' bodies plunge to the ground from above, the plan changes--and one enraged Cthonian commander strikes back.
Epic Press, 2018Veils of Cthonia
With their power plant destroyed, the Ætherians send a reconnaissance group down to Ætheria to investigate the disaster. While below, they encounter Aral, a sixteen-year-old Cthonian--the only person left alive after the Cthonians' botched attack on the Ætherian power plant. But when Aral realizes that Rex Himmel is related to an Ætherian asylum-seeker living among the Cthonians, Rex understands that Aral might be the connection he needed to rebuild his broken family.
Epic Press, 2018Down for Air
Having survived a firefight with Cthonians below, Rex and Aral flee back up to Ætheria. As soon as they arrive, the two are separated and interrogated. Facing his government's refusal to accept the truth about Cthonia, Rex embarks on a quest to find Aral and rescue her from torture and imprisonment by the ever-more-paranoid Head Ductor, the ruler of Ætheria. Fortunately for them, a member of the militaristic Ætherian Cover Force decides to turn his back on the Head Ductor.
Epic Press, 2018Hypoxia
Having escaped Ætheria, Aral and Rex take refuge on Cthonia near the impact site of Ætheria's power plant. At the same time, a team of armed Cthonian scouts sets out to recover their dead from the destruction. Among them, the Ætherian refugee Maire Himmel offers her knowledge of Ætheria to identify remnants of the destroyed power plant. Upon her arrival, though, Rex recognizes Maire as his mother, who was forced to leave him with a foster father sixteen years before.
Epic Press, 2018Wreckage of the Past
As Rex and Maire reunite, Ætherian operatives swarm Cthonia. The Cthonians, Rex, Maire, and Aral flee, but they are soon embroiled in a firefight with an advance Ætherian guard. When the Cthonians defeat the Ætherians, they force the sky dwellers to remove their respirators. Realizing the air on Cthonia is breathable, the Ætherians join with the Cthonians to tell the remaining Ætherians above the truth about Cthonia. A revolution begins.
Epic Press, 2018A New Family
After a weeklong trip to Rwanda, an American youth group embarks on the experience of a lifetime: a trek up the Nyiragongo volcano in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. Now the volcano has been calm for years, and tourists once again brave its slopes. But as night falls and the trekkers take shelter at the craters rim, a low rumble announces that the volcano might not be so calm, after all.
Epic Press, 2017