For first-time novelist Joanne Kormylo, writing historical fiction was a way to get closer to her father, who had served as an RCAF bomber pilot and was a prisoner of war during the Second World War. “He didn’t talk about it. It was very difficult for him,” Kormylo told CTV News. “It formed a very large part of my life because, in hindsight, he did have PTSD, which no one recognized in those days. He was a wonderful, wonderful man,” she said. Her debut novel, The Resistance Daughter, tells the story of a prisoner of war and the efforts of civilians in the Polish Resistance. The book is published by Hodder and Stoughton, a British publishing house. “I feel it’s such an important part of Canadian history that I was disappointed that it wasn’t more recognized here to be published, but the U.K. was really wonderful to me,” she said.
