Lucky Stars and Gold Bars
Karen Sladek
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Penlyric Press
ISBN: 0972192581

A World War II Odyssey.

Even though Karen Sladek's father & his six brothers all fought in various theaters of WWII, demobbed & back home in peacetime, they never talked about their travels or experiences during family gatherings. Accustomed to this silence, Karen grew up knowing little, other than a brief mention in a high school class, about the global conflict her parents, two of The Greatest Generation, survived.

It all started when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 & Karen Sladek & her best-friend, also named Karen, decided to trace their roots by traveling to the newly reopened Eastern Europe -- Poland, East Germany & the Czech Republic. In Prague they spent a night talking with their landlady, the first person to truly bring the Second World War alive for these two American Baby Boomers.

Then Karen's best friend wanted to find her mother's birthplace, somewhere in what had been Czechoslovakia. With a letter of introduction from their Prague landlady, they did find a relative &, with a translator, found comfort in getting a glimpse of what their grandparents had gone through to give their children the American Dream. At the same time Karen Sladek began to realize what her father had done to preserve her freedom.

Luckily for us, Lt. Lyle Sladek came from a family who wrote letters & saved them in their envelopes, together with postcards, snapshots & all sorts of memorabilia. They are the source for this epic labor of love, which at 522, is much, much more than a mere recording of her father's letters. To better fill in the gaps, Karen Sladek adds historical perspectives with excerpts from President Roosevelt's wartime speeches, sections of other wartime events, narratives about life back on the farm in South Dakota, & the happenings of other family members.

Lucky Stars and Gold Bars also includes many photographs of both her mother & father's immigrant parents dating back to 1895 when they first arrived in Dakota Territory, the building of farmhouses, family, school & college groups, as well as the snapshots from her father's odyssey around the world in the Army Air Corps as an Intelligence Officer & Cryptographer.

Lucky Stars and Gold Bars, with song titles & various sayings from that time as chapter headings, is chockful of the adventures, thoughts & language of one ordinary American youth who was swept up into an extraordinary era.

An outstanding time warp! Lucky Stars and Gold Bars: A World War II Odyssey won a 2005 Benjamin Franklin Award.

Do catch my editorial Discovering Your Parents & visit this book's remarkable website: www.luckystarsandgoldbars.com
(05/21/06)

Rebecca