Editing & Writing Portfolio

Ten-year-old Pinchas is separated from his parents and twin sister when they are deported from the Warsaw ghetto to the killing site of Majdanek.

Then, sent to a series of concentration camps, he shuts himself off to the terrors surrounding him and tries to become invisible. But, after liberation, his photographic memory won’t let the past fade away as he struggles with nightmares and flashbacks. This book is a poignant reflection on suffering, injustice and trauma but also offers hope and faith in the future.

The first part of a two-part memoir. As a minister of the United Church of Canada, Dorinda served her communities for forty-two years.

As a single mother raising a young son, she travelled to the west and worked with First Nations communities. The most difficult part of her journey took her to the Roseau River Indian Reserve in Manitoba where she witnessed the struggle to survive faced by the people there. Dorinda Vollmer has lived a life full of music, art and poetry which sustained her in the happiest and darkest of times.

Her abiding passion has always been to live a life of purpose and her story will resonate with anyone who has found themselves at a crossroad. She has learned that, when the sky darkens, people search for light and that faith in the goodness of humanity helps individuals rise above personal suffering.

In the second volume of her memoir, Dorinda continues her journey as she and her son leave The Roseau River Indian Reserve in Manitoba and settle in Ontario.

Establishing her ministry in small rural towns across the province, she sometimes found herself mired in conflict and controversy because of her progressive and inclusive views of society and used compassion and persistence to build her role as a community leader who spoke for those who needed support in whatever form their worship took.

This is the story of a woman’s lifelong dedication to faith, justice and humanity. It is a reminder to all of us to be more careful, kinder and more respectful of others, especially those who have no voice.

Jack Buchman was seven years old when World War II broke out in Warsaw, Poland where he was living with his family. As the German planes bombarded the city on September 1, 1939, they were all at home and their lives changed in an instant.

As a child during the war, he lived like an adult, taking on all the responsibilities an adult would to make sure his family had food, risking his own life to take care of his sick mother. When the war ended, he was expected to be a child again.

The transition was very difficult but, through life in an orphanage that took in surviving orphans of the Holocaust, he found a way back into civilization. In France he found Roma, the girl who would be his partner in life and, with her, he raised a family and made a life for himself in Canada, a place where he could belong. His most important advice to anyone reading his memoir is to take the threats of our enemies very seriously. Face them and fight for the right at every opportunity before it is too late.

This novel takes place in Shanghai, amid the chaos of the early twentieth century as revolution rocked China and decadent Shanghai was like no other place on earth.

Three women, one Russian, one Chinese and one French, determine the fate of a young man. Tatiana, the Russian narrator, has chosen a life of careless abandon, turning her back on family and friends. When a chance encounter in a Shanghai nightclub presents a moral dilemma, she is forced to make an agonizing decision. Looking back on her actions thirty years later, she fears she may have been the catalyst for a series of events that destroyed the lives around her.

This book is about a journey of awakening and learning the willingness to love. Ned Burwell says in the preface, “I spent the first twenty years of my life covering myself. Then I spent the next twenty years shaking off the things with which I’d covered myself.”

He devoted his life to studying spirituality and self help and spent eight years with the Ishaya Monks, eventually taking his vows and becoming a monk for one year, an experience that helped deepen his awakening.

Ned’s curious spirit and willingness to love has enlivened his ability to be a teacher to many and this book holds some of the deep wisdom that he has acquired during his journey.

It is intended to turn the reader inward and experience a personal transformation. The material in this book has the power to radically shift one’s current state of consciousness and may hold the key to the reader’s awakening.