“My Aha! Moment”

I always thought I would have to chase my story ideas down – like an undercover

reporter slowly unearthing clue after clue. Or I thought the story would trickle down to me over

time – like C.S. Lewis’ tales of Narnia, years of experiences and ideas finally culminating in a

masterpiece. But the idea for Diamonds in Auschwitz, my debut novel, hit me like a bolt of

lightning. One minute I was driving to work, another aspiring writer who was not writing; the

next minute I was an aspiring writer with an entire novel planned in an instant.

To say I was excited is an understatement – just ask my friend Hannah, who I called in

that instant, practically shouting that I had (I think, maybe, what do you think?) an idea for a

novel.

It was my aha! moment.

I was reading Born Survivors by Wendy Holden (I highly recommend it). As I was driving,

I was obsessing about a small anecdote she mentioned in this nonfiction book about women

who gave birth in Auschwitz. One woman had managed to hold onto her engagement ring, a

family heirloom, throughout her time in the ghetto. As she was standing in line to enter

Auschwitz, she made the decision that the Nazis would not have her ring. She dropped it in the

mud outside of the gates of hell.

As I was driving, I imagined what it would have been like to pick up that ring from the

dirt outside a concentration camp. First, my mind went to a Nazi guard. That was a sickening

thought… all the work to save the ring from the Nazis and they ended up with it anyways.

Then I thought, what if a fellow prisoner found it? True, a precious piece of jewelry was

practically valueless in Auschwitz. A prisoner could not eat it, and even if she traded it for food,

it would never be enough to keep hunger at bay for long. But besides the monetary value of the

ring, what would finding it do to a prisoner?

Aha!

I saw the plot immediately. A woman – a prisoner in Auschwitz who had lost everything

– picked the ring out of the mud. To find something so beautiful, to pick up what a defiant

woman who refused to let the Nazis take everything from her left behind, that’s where the

story of Diamonds in Auschwitz begins.