Title: Like a Haystack
Author: Margaret Smolik
Publisher: Toplink Publishing
ISBN: 978-1970066005
Pages: 95
Genre: Memoir
Synopsis
Like A Haystack brings to life events and forces that drove the author’s family to be uprooted from their ancestral community in Croatia during World War II. It describes the family’s background, their experiences in Austria after the war, and their emigration to the United States and to Iowa.
In Like A Haystack the author contrasts life in Europe and in America. She highlights the endurance needed to survive war, poverty, suffering, and adapting to new cultures. She portrays people who do whatever it takes to achieve the American dream. The symbolism of a haystack is apt in that all of us are formed by many events that must be uncovered and accepted. Lynn Haakenson, an English teacher, commented, “This account is a fascinating memoir of the author’s life in Croatia in WWII and her family’s adjustment to life in America.”
About the Author
Margaret Grgurič Smolik and her family escaped Croatia during World War II and came to the United States in 1952. The author earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, and is a lifelong teacher of English and writing. She is a certified copy editor and author of two children’s books and has several poems published in Lyrical Iowa, the annual anthology of the Iowa Poetry Association. She is active in her community and parish and the local writers group. Margaret and her husband raised four children. She currently resides in Osage, Iowa.
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