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Why A Romance Writer Tackled Historical Fiction 

by Nicki Pascarella

One of my favorite childhood memories is sitting around the kitchen table with my siblings and cousins, listening to my maternal grandparents weave colorful tales. They were both master storytellers, able to captivate their seven grandchildren despite some of us having short attention spans. Sometimes, the tales come around to my grandfather’s war stories. He was a radio operator on a B-17 who was shot down over Germany and spent the end of the war with a stump for an arm as he was interrogated by the Gestapo and shuffled through POW camps. 

When I was a teenager, my grandfather asked me to record his stories. I’m ashamed to admit that high school girl things sidetracked me. Then, I was off to college. Soon, I met my husband, landed a teaching job, became obsessed with my dogs, and raised my daughter. Yada. Yada. Yada… Almost twenty-five years after his death, I experienced a personal crisis that led me to pour my heart into reading through my grandfather’s medical records, his old newspaper and magazine clippings, and researching World War II. A year and a half later, I published his story within the pages of my debut Women’s Fiction novel, StumpStrong: Strength In Roots. 

After reading Stumpstrong, my dear friend Julie Lokun sent me her grandfather’s unpublished memoir, asking, “Do you think there is a story here?” The 500-ish page manuscript had sat on a shelf in her father’s study for over thirty years. 

Truthfully, I had no desire to read the dusty binder. How would I know if there was a story? I was a romance author, and my interest in war stories did not extend beyond my grandfather’s. But since Julie is my friend, I opened the book and plodded through the introduction. 

Soon, I found myself drawn into this story of a young man, from another country who lived two generations before me. Vivid images of picking mushrooms in the Moravian mountains swirled in my dreams. I marched around a classroom with two dozen children chanting, “Heil, Caesar.” Wasps stung me as I was bamboozled into playing beside their swarming nest.

“What?” I indignantly called out when Jan Drost faked birth certificates to protect himself from Nazi persecution. “No!” I cried when he divorced the love of his life to protect his family. I could go on and on with these powerful moments that called to me. Then came my epiphany. If I was feeling this connection to a man I’d never met, so would others. Because—

The entire world—every single person—in every single country—is connected through our past.

And in particular, the Baby Boomers and Generations X, Y, and Z because we still have our ancestor’s traumas from the world wars running through our veins. 

It was settled: this romance writer wanted to share Jan Drost’s powerful story—a story of us all—with the world. 

Writing the book

I am not an expert on European History or the world wars. However, I felt a kinship with Jan. Perhaps I saw my grandfather in him. Although very different men, one American and one Czechoslovakian, they were both larger-than-life, resilient heroes who possessed indomitable spirits. I spent the next seven months sitting behind my computer, Jan’s spirit by my side. I know I sound insane, but Jan chatted with me as I tapped away. “No,” he’d say. “You didn’t get that quite right.” And then there were the moments he’d say, “Yes. That’s it. Perfect!”

I’m often asked how I decided what snippets to retell from ninety years of a man’s life. It’s simple. Once I channeled Jan, his life played like a movie in my mind. I added symbolism, an inciting incident, rising action, a climax, and a resolution. I recreated the scenes that stuck with me and tried to write them for modern readers. I did not focus on the historical events. Instead, I tried to bring to life how one man reacted to these events. 

Once the manuscript was complete, I worked with Jan’s youngest son, George Drost, to ensure that my history and cultural references were correct. I can’t articulate what an honor it was to learn about—and be welcomed and embraced by another culture. I laugh when I tell people, “In my first draft, I completely messed up trying to go back and forth between the German and Czech languages. I wrote everything using a German Google translator.” Luckily, I had a patient team helping me with these errors. 

What do I want readers to take away from The Quiet Hero?

The most powerful lesson in Jan’s story is that the entire world is connected through this traumatic historical period. All of our ancestors lived through this, and through them, it is a part of each and every one of us. 

Here is a line from Stumpstrong that captures the importance of our forefathers’ (and mothers’) stories: “I am too busy connecting to my familial roots. They grow deep, lovingly twine around everything, reach into the fresh air to breathe, and then stretch toward the sun. Why did it take the tragedy of a near-death experience for me to understand this?”

A Special Thank You

Thank you to George Drost for sharing some of his beautiful paintings by Czech painter Joža Upkra. Uprka lived from 1861 to 1940. He combined elements of Impressionism and Art Nouveau to document life in Moravia. To see more of George’s collection, check out 

https://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/exhibits/profiles/national-treasure.html

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