Bert C. Wouters
“As a child of the war in Europe, you must write your remembrances of the war,” spoke 80-year-old Harold, veteran of WWII to the author. Sadly, Harold passed away three weeks later. If he had not spoken these words ‘Madonna on the Bridge’ would not have been written.
Born in 1937, the author understood Harold’s message. Not that many years are left to write about the war in the avenue, where he grew up with his parents under German occupation.
In 1961 he completed his military service with the Belgian Army, and in 1963 he emigrated to the United States of America. He studied at Michigan State University, earning an M.A. in Counseling Psychology.
During research on WWII he ran across a footnote about the Circassian people, who had come to the attention of the SS in Germany. Himmler decided to recruit the Circassians for intelligence gathering operations. He based his decision on the Circassian expertise in secret military operations. However the Allied beat him to the task.
In a private moment with his mother the author learned about a family secret that her father was the offspring of a Circassian beauty, who became pregnant by a professor who served as an SS Officer with Himmler in the German Reich,.
The author found inspiration researching the history of the Circassians. He was amazed at their richness in tradition, culture and family values.
Writing ‘Madonna on the Bridge’ has been a journey of passion and hard work elucidating ‘courage & heroism’, unique ethnic characteristics of the Circassians. For this historical European fiction novel the author discovered that Circassians are endowed with the unique genome of the ‘High Risk Taker’, which led the author to write the novel in the Cultural Heritage Fiction category.
Bert Wouters is a member of the International Thriller Writers, Romance Writers of America, Independent Writers of Southern California, and the Ventura County Genealogical Society.
With the novel Madonna on the Bridge the writer hopes to solidify the bond amongst Circassians, engrained with a unified desire to regain their homeland on the shores of the Black Sea.
