Books by Julian Padowicz

When bombs began to fall on Warsaw, Julian's world crumbled. His beloved governess Kiki returned to her family in Lodz; Julian's stepfather joined the Polish army and the grief-stricken boy was left with the mother whom he hardly knew. Resourceful and determined, his mother did whatever was necessary to provide for herself and her son: she brazenly cut into food lines and befriended Russian officers to get extra rations of food and fuel. But brought up by Kiki to distrust all things Jewish, Julian considered his mother's behavior un-Christian.

WRITER''S BLOCK - A sensational new novel from the award-winning author and filmmaker Julian Padowicz From his miserable childhood to his mediocre career as a college professor, fate had not been kind, or even terribly fair, to "Kip" Kippur. But Kip''s luck changes when he inherits a house in a small coastal village in Massachusetts. He chucks his previous life and moves there to write the Great American Novel-a thinly disguised autobiography. As Kip struggles to transmute a leaden life into golden fiction, he finds himself alone and rudderless in a strange community. He stumbles into a mysterious murder, an awkward romance, a married lady''s hot-tub, an unusual proposal of marriage-and an invitation to sail to Florida, during storm season, in a sailboat of questionable seaworthiness, with an autocratic captain and a homicidal crew mate. But Writer''s Block is more than just the tale of a late-life crisis gone terribly awry. It''s also an intriguing portrait of a small town and the complex people who inhabit it. It will keep you riveted all the way to its crashing conclusion.

Loves of Yulian is the poignant conclusion to the three-part memoir recounting the author's harrowing WWII escape from occupied Poland to America. After fleeing over the Carpathian Mountains into Hungary, eight-year-old Yulian and his resourceful but self-involved mother, Barbara, are on board a ship to Rio de Janeiro to await their turn for immigration to the United States. A former Warsaw socialite, Barbara has no marketable skills, only her looks, wits and courage. Paying their way by selling the diamonds she had concealed in her clothing, they land in Brazil with only the diamond engagement ring on her finger. Somehow, it must finance both their stay and eventual passage to New York. Yulian, a sensitive Jewish boy raised by an overprotective, devoutly Catholic nanny, has difficulty interacting with other children and concludes that God is punishing him for abandoning Judaism. Complicating matters, he falls in love with a beautiful, but significantly older, fellow refugee, Irenka, who has been hired to take him to the beach. When his mother meets a man she truly cares for, Yulian hopes he has finally found his long-sought-after father figure. But Barbara's European upper-class values clash with her suitor's Latin ardor, leaving Yulian in the middle of a misaligned courtship, which he desperately wants to set right. Eventually, Yulian resolves his spiritual issues with the help of a celebrated Polish poet and his own teddy bear. His ambitious mother, however, must choose between a man she truly loves and her future in America.