A personal story, new characters, and an invitation

As the summer is coming to an end here in Seattle, the leaves on trees look like they can't bear to stay green much longer. Meanwhile my fingers are eager to let the sequel of The Danish War Bride unfold.

Today, my son started high school, and my daughter had her first and last day of school at her high school. Time flies by, while I long to look back and delve into the stories it leaves behind.

I have a lot to share with you this month – from a new writing project to an event here in the Seattle area.

The image that inspired one of the most important chapters in The Danish War Bride

In the last newsletter, I promised to share the photo that inspired me to write one of the most important chapters in The Danish War Bride. Look at it.

At first glance the photo doesn't look like much, but on closer inspection, I noticed the individual elements on the table, paid attention to the facial features and body language. The photo was taken the day my grandmother married Forest Edgar Rhodes. I remember my own wedding day as one long, warm, happy, and joyful event. In this photo, however, you almost sense the mixed emotions of hope and sadness in my grandmother's facial expression. Just four months prior, she lost her sister, now she is married to her widower. Maybe it is the weight of loss and love that is looking back at us?

My Grandmother and Forrest to the right

Characters take shape

I'm in the middle of writing the sequel to The Danish War Bride, and the characters are coming alive with their quirks, temperaments, and personalities. It's fun to see how a trip to my local grocery store can inspire a certain gesture, outfit, or habit that I must rush home to add to a character. I look forward for you to meeting the characters.

“Who are you, father?” Article in Jyllands-Posten on August 24

In connection with the launch of The Danish War Bride and my summer holiday in Denmark, I travelled to Athens to meet my biological father for the first time in my life. I wrote an article about my experience in Jyllands-Posten. In the article, I focus on the emotional impact on a child of living with an absent father. Further, I reflect upon how a search might yield different answers than you thought you were looking for. Read the text here

The newspaper article inspired me to begin a new writing project.

Are you writing two books at the same time?

Yes, you read that right. I have decided to write both the sequel to The Danish War Bride and a book about absent fathers, based on my own experiences. It will be hard, and exciting, and challenging, and I can hardly wait to get started. How it will work out practically, time will tell. For now, I will divide the week so that I focus on one book three days out of the week and on the other for three days - and take one day semi-off 😊

The English edition of The Danish War Bride

The English manuscript is on my desk. This week I will meticulously review the editor's corrections, suggestions, and questions before sending it to selected American agents. Two agents have already received the manuscript, and although it is difficult to break through, I am crossing my fingers for an offer letter. I will of course keep you updated.

Many thanks to you.

The Danish War Bride is now available at 71 libraries in Denmark, and several places even have a waiting list! Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. It takes a lot of legwork to break through as a new author, and your help makes me so touched and happy.

If you haven't ordered my book at your local library yet, I hope you'll take a few seconds to do so on your cell, so that libraries will be know there are readers out there who would like to see the book on their library. Thank you very much in advance.

Upcoming events

The Danish Club of Seattle has invited me to talk about my life as a Danish-American columnist and author and to give a presentation of The Danish War Bride. Mark your calendars:

Date: September 13

Time: 2-4 pm

Where: Café Hagen, 777 108th Ave Ne, Bellevue 98004

Now that the kids are back at school, my everyday and family life is changing. At the same time, I am turning to the 1940s and 1950s where the past spreads its wings and leaves me with deep respect for the women who came before me.

As always, dear reader: thank you for following my life and my writing process.

Warmly,

Desiree

PS In the next newsletter I'll share a quote that inspired me to write about Donut Dollies. I had never heard of these heroic women, who history has largely forgotten, until I started researching for The Danish War Bride and I hope you find their story as inspiring as I do. Stay tuned, as they say over here!

Who Are You, Father?

I traveled to Athens to meet my biological father—and discovered a story different from the one I longed for

The dream of having a father lies deep within me. I am one of more than 300,000 children in Denmark who grew up without a father at home. I know the kind of longings, fantasies, and self-blame that absence can trigger.

My mother met my biological Greek father when she was quite young.

A few months later, I was part of a mom-dad-baby equation that didn’t work out.

My father returned to Greece when I was four months old, and my 18-year-old mother stayed behind in Copenhagen.

When I was seven years old, I traveled with my mother to Athens to meet him. Finally, I was going to meet my real father! I was as happy as any child could be.

In Athens, we lived with his parents. That week I barely went outside, afraid to miss him if he walked through the door. But he didn’t, and my mother and I returned to Denmark. “I’m not worth getting to know,” I thought.

Back in Denmark, in the social housing development where we lived, I dreamed that my father would come riding up the stairs in the hallway on a big horse, lift me up, and take me away from the chaotic life I was trapped in.

As I grew older, I would regularly search his name. The first search led me to a brother I later visited in the U.S. He showed me pictures of the father I resembled more than I resembled my mother.

Another search led me to a sister who looked more like me than my Danish sisters.

A third search resulted in a mugshot.

My biological father had been arrested, and from the computer screen the gaze of a ravaged, older man met mine with eyes that looked like my own.

Staring into my origins felt like a defeat and brought my search to an end.

Ten years passed before I again felt the urge to find him. If I was going to get answers, I thought, time was running out. I followed in his footsteps once more, finding and talking to women who had once loved him. With each new conversation, I added pieces to a puzzle whose picture did not impress me.

Still, I continued—because now I wanted answers once and for all.

And then one day, a few weeks ago, I found him on Facebook. He was back in Greece and had a shop in Athens. Google’s street camera revealed that his shop was in a run-down neighborhood.

I called several times, and one day he picked up.

For 40 minutes he spoke non-stop. Meanwhile I sat holding my breath. After decades of dreams and hopes, I sat with the phone pressed to my ear and talked to him—my father!

He talked about the past, about Athens, about me. He was charming, spoke in metaphors of East and West, and had an intelligent sense of humor. I understood why my mother and so many other women had fallen for him. He said he had hoped I would find him.

I felt a deep, physical recognition as I listened. I hadn’t seen him, hadn’t heard his voice, hadn’t had the slightest contact with him since he left. Maybe it was the little girl in me seeking identification, but I think it was more than that. I recognized myself in him in a way that felt like I finally understood where I came from.

“Keep calling me if I don’t answer the phone,” he said before we hung up.

“I’m not good with technology.”

He paused briefly in his stream of speech. “I love Copenhagen! I love you!” he exclaimed, while I felt a strange sensation in my body.

“You can’t just stay for two days—I’ll show you all of Greece!” he said before we ended the call.

“Be careful,” a close friend said later over a glass of wine. “The little girl in you wants this so badly.”

“You’ll need someone to lean on,” said another close friend, who flew in from Seattle to accompany me to Athens.

Athens greeted me with a mixture of Southern European heat and cigarette smoke.

All I want, I thought as I walked toward the hotel, is clarification. You are a grown woman, not a child dreaming of a father, I told myself. My shaking hands told a different story.

The next day, I got into a taxi, feeling out of my body. I decided to tell the driver where we were going and why—just to be on the safe side, and in case we needed an interpreter.

We circled the block where his store was located twice before I asked the driver to park.

Inside the shop, a man jumped up, startled, as if he had seen a ghost. He looked a bit like my father, but he was not the man I was looking for. Maybe he was my uncle? My cousin?

Clearly upset and with every sign of lying, he claimed not to know the man I was searching for.

The man had the same name as my biological father, and our driver explained that in Greece, family members often share the same name.

Everything about him told me he wasn’t telling the truth. Frustrated, I almost shouted, “WHERE IS (my father’s name)?”

Here I stood in Athens after a lifetime of waiting. I understood nothing. We had an agreement...

I turned to the driver, asking him to explain in Greek that I just wanted five minutes, an appreciative hello, a chance to look into my father’s eyes, to sense his face.

Nothing worked.

“Let’s try to reach his heart through his native language,” the driver suggested, offering to write a message in Greek, which he sent via my phone. There was no response.

When the driver pulled away from the curb, tears came pouring down.

Through sobs, I asked:

“Why am I not worth loving?”

My friend cried with me.

Then a white rage rolled through me. Anger took over my body, and I shouted, cursed, wanted to run far away, to leave Greece.

“He doesn’t deserve you,” the driver said gently. But in my heart I thought, He must think I’m worth deserving of love.

I’ve always asked myself: Where are you, Dad? But the question is really: Who are you? Because who does that to another human being?

My desire in sharing my story is not to re-traumatize, but to speak for the child—the one who is abandoned, forgotten, or made into a shadow.

Many of us carry stories of absence and the feeling of not being enough.

That kind of wound doesn’t disappear with time.

My hope is to give a voice to others who have experienced the pain of abandonment, and to those who are still waiting.