BLOG TOUR: BROKEN STONE by Gabriele Goldstone + #GIVEAWAY

Welcome to my tour stop for BROKEN STONE by Gabriele Goldstone!

I have a wonderful guest post today about how to make a True Story one of your own by the author and if you keep scrolling to the bottom, there is a giveaway for seven lucky winners! 

Before all that, let's learn more about the book...

BROKEN STONE

Author: Gabriele Goldstone
Publisher: Rebelight Publishing Inc.
Publication Date: November 17, 2015

Summary:
Mama is dead, Baby Emil is dead and Stalin’s new rules are breaking up the family. Papa must stay behind and hide as 12-year-old Katya and her three younger siblings find their way to freedom in East Prussia. With Mama’s sister, Aunt Helena, they board a train and flee for a new home with an aunt and uncle they’ve never met—relatives who don’t want them.

But when they reach the border, Soldiers won’t let Aunt Helena cross. That forces Katya to take responsibility for her siblings. What will life hold for Katya, her two sisters and her brother when they arrive in East Prussia? How long before Papa can rescue them?

Purchase:

Chapters | IndieBound | Amazon | TBD 

Broken Stone is the follow up to RED STONE

RED STONE

Author: Gabriele Goldstone

Publisher: Rebelight Puslihing Inc.

Publication Date: June 6, 2015

Summary:

Katya knows all about Stalin’s big plans; she learned of them in school. But those plans mean little to her until the secret police arrest Papa and seize their family farm. With Mama and her younger siblings, Katya is shoved into a crowded train headed for a forced labour camp in Siberia. Torn from everything she has ever known, Katya faces cold and hunger, and the ever-present threat of lost hope. As she clings to a single red stone from the fields of her homeland, she questions life. Where is Papa? Will she ever see him again? And what will become of Katya’s family?

Inspired by a true story, Red Stone explores the trauma and heart¬break suffered by many families in the Soviet Union during the 1930s when Stalin seized individual property and villainized property owners as kulaks.

Purchase:

Chapters | IndieBound | Amazon | TBD

How To Make A True Story One Of Your Own

The first time I heard, no...the first time I really listened, to the stories my mom shared in bits and pieces over dinners, car rides and sewing projects (she sewed, I listened), was about twenty years ago. It was the Christmas after my dad had passed away. He didn’t encourage questions about the good ole days.  After he died, I realized what a treasure trove of history had been taken from me. So, this first Christmas without him, my own three children were being rather rambunctious at the dinner table and Oma proceeded to tell them a story. That day’s anecdote became the seed for my books and eventually a chapter in Red Stone. (The prequel to Broken Stone). It’s about Katya disobeying her parents and celebrating Christmas when it had been outlawed. This pivotal Christmas gave me the gift of looking at my mom with fresh eyes. One— she had really been a kid once (even though at that point I had no photographs to prove this) and two—she had been a naughty child. My harsh, stern, judgmental mother had once been naughty? Suddenly she seemed more human and a lot more interesting.

When I wrote and sought publication for my first book, it was written in third person. It seemed a safe place to be...once upon a time in a faraway land... But the editor suggested I get closer. She said I should try re-writing it as a first person story. At first I balked. How could I have the audacity to step inside my mother’s head?  And could I handle being that close? My mom and I had never really gotten along. She was old-school, a European immigrant. An embarrassment to a girl growing up in suburban Canada. She recycled, reduced and reused, way before it was fashionable. But, I did believe in the story—and so re-writing it as a first person narrative made the story come alive. By writing in the first person, I developed empathy not just for my character, Katya, but for my real-life mother. It has been an intense and empowering journey.

A strange thing happened as I was writing the second book, Broken Stone. It started off with the sad image of my mom (I did manage to get some photographs of her as a child ) but at some point while writing, she transformed into me. At some point the mean, nasty character of Aunt Elfriede became my mother and I became the misunderstood Katya. I only noticed this in hindsight, after I’d finished writing it and I’m still mulling this over. One of my favorite books by Marilyn French is Her Mother’s Daughter. There’s something about mother/daughter relationships that belongs to the core of our identity. 

So, to answer your question, how to make a true story one of your own? It’s all about crawling into the other person’s skin. It’s about empathy, about understanding, and about self-reflection. Our characters can become mirrors of ourselves. It’s the craft of fiction that makes our truths more digestible. 

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Gabriele Goldstone inherited scattered bits of her mother’s memories, shadowed by the oppression of both Stalin and Hitler. She shaped them into the life of the fictional character, Katya Halter. Gabriele traveled to Ukraine and searched through former KGB files to find missing pieces—along with the red stone that symbolizes Katya's home. Gabriele lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Connect with the Author:  

Website | Twitter | Goodreads

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Two (2) winners will received a physical copy of Broken Stone by Gabriele Goldstone (US/Canada);
Five (5) winners will receive a digital copy of Broken Stone by Gabriele Goldstone (INT)
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