In Victoria's War, Hamilton gives voice to the courageous Polish women who were kidnapped into the real-life Nazi slave labor operation during WWII. Inspired by true stories, this lost chapter of history won't soon be forgotten.POLAND, 1939: Nineteen-year-old Victoria Darski is eager to move away to college: her bags are packed and her train ticket is in hand. But instead of boarding a train to the University of Warsaw, she finds her world turned upside down when World War II breaks out. Victoria's father is sent to a raging battlefront, and the Darski women face the cruelty of the invaders alone. After the unthinkable happens, Victoria is ordered to work in a Nazi sewing factory. When she decides to go to a resistance meeting with her best friend, Sylvia, they are captured by human traffickers targeting Polish teenagers. Sylvia is singled out and sent to work in brothels, and Victoria is transported in a cattle car to Berlin, where she is auctioned off as a slave.GERMANY, 1941: Twenty-year-old Etta Tod is at Mercy Hospital, where she's about to undergo involuntary sterilization because of the Fuhrer's mandate to eliminate hereditary deafness. Etta, an artist, silently critiques the propaganda poster on the waiting room wall while her mother tries to convince her she should be glad to get rid of her monthlies. Etta is the daughter of the German shopkeepers who buy Victoria at auction in Berlin.The stories of Victoria and Etta intertwine in the bakery's attic where Victoria is held the same place where Etta has hidden her anti-Nazi paintings. The two women form a quick and enduring bond. But when they're caught stealing bread from the bakery and smuggling it to a nearby work camp, everything changes. "Some stories that need to be told are never told. They languish in a limbo of forgotten stories that should never have been forgotten. Hamilton's Victoria's War resurrects one of these stories. In language intimate and natural and yet touched by the poetry of truth, Hamilton tells the story of a young girl who is the victim of war. Too often, we think only of the men who go to war and do heroic things. We forget the other victims and heroes of war, the women like Victoria in this brilliant novel." --John Guzlowski, author of the award-winning Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded "In Victoria s War we follow the life of one Polish woman caught in the machinations of a war that has no pity. Inspired by the life of a real woman subjected to Hitler s forced labor program, Victoria's War reveals the hatred and fanaticism against Poles in Nazi Germany and the specific vulnerabilities of women that made their lives a living hell. Hamilton's story about a largely ignored aspect of women s history is emotionally evocative and rich in detail." --Sophie Hodorowicz Knab, author of Wearing the Letter P: Polish Women as Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany, 1939 1945 "Victoria's War is a compelling story of a young Polish woman trapped in the vise of the German invasion of Poland at the opening salvo of World War II. Written in an engaging literary style that captures the textuers of Polish life, Catherine Hamilton's gripping novel is a must read!" --Dr. Richard C. Lukas, author of Did the Children Cry?: Hitler's War against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939 1945 and editor of Forgotten Survivors: Polish Christians Remember the Nazi Occupation CATHERINE A. HAMILTON is a freelance writer of Polish descent whose articles and poems have appeared in magazines and newspapers including the Sarasota Herald-Tribune , the Oregonian , the Catholic Sentinel , the Dziennik Zwi zkowy (the oldest Polish newspaper in America), and the Polish American Journal . She is the author of the chapter about Katherine Graczyk in Forgotten Survivors: Polish Christians Remember the Nazi Occupation , edited by Richard C. Lukas. Victoria's War, her first novel, will be published in 2020 by Plain View Press. She actively publishes and blogs at catherineahamilton.com. Hamilton lives in the Northwest with her husband.