Seventeen years ago, the daughter of Halfmoon Bay resident John Bell asked him to write her grandfather’s biography. She had good reason. Grandad was 80 at the time. The family had heard his war stories countless times – fascinating tales of trials and tribulations. As a young Yugoslav air force pilot, he was coerced onto the wrong side of WWII with the German invasion of 1941. He was dispatched to the Russian front – from there to surveillance over the Adriatic Sea, where he would parachute into the frigid waters with three bullets in his body. After that, unsanitary Italian hospitals, North African detention centres, and finally POW camps in the United States where he would spend the rest of the war. His troubles were far from over. Upon repatriation, he became an enemy of the state in Tito’s newly-created communist regime.
The biography was published for the family, and eight years ago Bell decided to fictionalize the tale into a thrilling novel. He was a published non-fiction author, but fiction proved to be far more challenging than anticipated. The first draft of The Circumstantial Enemy was competed in two years. Another six years were required for rewriting, editing, historical fact-checking, and searching for the right publisher.
This captivating book about the strength of the human spirit, and the power of love, friendship and forgiveness was released by Endeavour Press last month. The Circumstantial Enemy is now on the shelves of Talewind Books in Sechelt.
– Submitted
