A Polish Boy-Genius in a Hostile Environment
Poland, 1848: Where survival is a daily struggle and intelligence can be a dangerous gift.
In a land crushed under Prussian rule, where peasants are reduced to foraging in the forest just to eat, one boy's mind sets him apart-and places him in danger. Young orphan Val Karnowski, a Polish peasant child with a genius-level IQ, is taken in by a kind-hearted illiterate man who believes Val must be educated-despite fierce resistance from his own wife and a society that sees no need to educate the poor.
But the only school available is Prussian-run, designed by Otto von Bismarck's government to erase Polish identity. There, Val's extraordinary mind meets a cruel and chaotic world: a jealous young teacher, resentful classmates, and an institution that openly favors its German students. With a sharp eye and a tender heart, Val navigates bullies, tattletales, outcasts, and jealous peers-experiencing the full, raw spectrum of childhood in an environment stacked against him.
Meanwhile, far from the schoolhouse, the dark specter of history looms. In twisted, dreamlike scenes, Bismarck himself is visited by the Devil at 3:00 a.m., who parades history's past-tyrants as exemplars for his rising war on Poles and Jews.
Will Val's brilliance be his salvation-or his undoing?
A story of resilience, injustice, childhood, and hope-this richly detailed historical novel will stir memories of your own school days, while pulling you deep into the soul of 19th-century Poland.
Autorentext
Gerald was born in 1937 in Chicago. As a child he was an avid reader of How to Draw books. One day at age 11 he wandered over to the Grown-up Books section of the public library and pulled down a picture-book of gothic cathedrals. He fell in love with their beauty. His mother used to give him the white paper in which the butcher had wrapped meat. Finding a large piece of plywood, he became "the only kid on his block" who used to sketch up gothic cathedral façades. He began studying Architecture in 1955 and worked his way thru college, earning a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Illinois in 1966. He is proud to say that he never took a penny of student loans. He received an Illinois license in 1972. Sometime after that he began conducting genealogical research on his ancestors. He speaks Polish, German, and Spanish to some extent. He has a gift for language.
Gerald has undergone three intensifications of faith in his life: one at age fourteen, when, as a child prodigy he became the object of three years of abuse by his classmates. He endured and graduated. The second was at age twenty-two, when it appeared he was about to die. He told himself, "If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna go out in a blaze of glory", and joined volunteer groups that kept him active every night of the week. The third was in 1982, when a concurrence of events, including the loss of a job, left him "down and out", and God gave him a new image of Himself as a very loving Father.
After this last intensification in 1982 began to feel the call to do something more directly to promote Jesus' kingdom on earth. He began to explore religious life. It saddened him to see the majority of adult Catholics coasting thru life on a few simplistic ideas that they picked up in early life. In 1992 he sold a condo in Chicago and used the money from the sale for education. He entered Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio in September, 1992. Once there he responded to a call by Fr. Michael Scanlon TOR and entered Holy Apostles Seminary for older men in Cromwell, CT. in fall, 1993. He spent 3 months doing door-to-door evangelization in Ceres and Modesto, CA in summer, 1994 while on assignment at St. Jude's parish, Ceres. He concluded that religious life was not for him and returned to Franciscan U. and earned a Master of Arts degree in Theology and Christian Ministry in 1996.
Unable to find work with his degree, and running out of money, he found a job as an archit...