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Appleton's POW Camp

Event Type: Adult Program
Age Group(s): All Ages, Adults, Seniors
Date: 7/27/2019
Start Time: 11:00 AM
End Time: 12:30 PM
Description:
 A Book Talk and Conversation with Bill Stokes

Join author Bill Stokes as he discusses the Appleton prisoner-of-war camp and what it meant to people in the area. Bill will also talk about the 50 years of research and writing he did on POW camps, which he used as background information for his recently published novel, Margaret’s War. A discussion of the Appleton POW camp will follow a brief reading from the book.

About Margaret’s War:
Margaret’s War is the story of a young woman’s broken heart, trampled soul and fragile sanity as German POWs are unexpectedly brought to her small Midwest town to help with the crop harvest.

Set near the end of World War II when home-front America suddenly came face-to-face with the enemy that had been killing their sons and lovers on foreign soil for years, Margaret’s War deals with the disempowerment of women, soldiers as dupes, raw racism, the human depravity born of war’s absurdities, and how 15-year-old Bill, his older reprobate friend and mentor Cy, and Margaret fight to bend the War to their own ends, eventually seeking the help of Eleanor Roosevelt in a scheme that threatens their very existence.

The novel tells the largely ignored American POW story as it played out in thousands of camps in 47 states, generating countless emotional encounters with Gold Star mothers, grieving young widows and distraught family members.

About Bill Stokes:
Bill Stokes retired as a columnist/feature writer from The Chicago Tribune after a 35 year career with four newspapers, including the Wisconsin State Journal and Stevens Point Daily Journal. He has authored a half dozen other books, some of them compilations of his popular columns and stories. Margaret’s War is his first novel.

Location: Meeting Room A/B/C