I’LL REMEMBER YOU by Deborah Packer

UNITED STATES, October 24, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- As a current upsurge of racism and anti-Semitism permeates America and abroad, author Deborah Packer has come out with a deeply human and often humorous novel of a conflicted World War II love story viewed against the immense hatred and intolerance on the home front.

Set on the turbulent home-front America of 1943 during the military buildup, a time fraught with broken promises, whirlwind courtships and the uncertainty of war, Packer’s I’LL REMEMBER YOU is played out in the shadow of anti-Semitism and racism. It chronicles a young couple’s struggle to communicate after a hasty courtship and marriage - a relationship plagued by personal challenges and childhood trauma as they coast along on the turmoil and quicksand of their hurried vows.

Readers are introduced to Bobbie Feinman, an idealistic, proud, small-town Jewish girl who travels to Miami Beach for a vacation and falls for Murray, a complex, young Jewish soldier from Brooklyn with horrific images of another war.

Murray’s haunting memories as a child in war-torn Poland give him unique insight into justice and his own mortality but frustrate and confuse Bobbie’s more sensible nature. Believing he may not really love her and doesn’t expect to survive the war, she finally witnesses a number of compelling instances that challenge her perceptions. As he leaves on a troop ship for England -- although the doubts and anxieties linger, she cries for this stranger she calls “husband” and wonders what a life together might be like if… There is an epilogue set in 1994.

Based on a true family tale and originally written as a screenplay, I’LL REMEMBER YOU is an intimate, character-driven story told from both perspectives, at the same time documenting the historical events of that stormy period in our history -- the concern for what was happening to the Jews of Europe, the pervasive social ills of the time and the anti-Semitism and racism as they affected the lives of the main characters.

Bittersweet and poignant, I’LL REMEMBER YOU captures what life was like in America in 1943 and the relationship between two young people caught up in the extreme desperation of an intensely unsettling time when the prospect of love was countered by the looming horror and expectations of war.

BookLife Prize says of the book, “The plot provides an eye-opening explanation of the era’s anti-Semitic attitudes.”

One Amazon reviewer calls the book “a truly entertaining and moving experience filled with well-developed and wonderfully rich characters, along with thought-provoking historical perspective.”

Packer is available for interviews to discuss/write on topics including but not limited to:
● Sharing personal experiences or true stories from the World War II era
● The importance of historical fiction and what it can teach us about the past
● The turbulence of the 1940s home front - the uncertainty of war as compared to today, watching the horror taking place in the Ukraine. A new understanding of the helplessness and concern that our parents and grandparents may have experienced listening to radio reports and reading about the war daily in newspapers.
● The complexity of love in literature

I’LL REMEMBER YOU is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

DEBORAH PACKER has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Speech and Drama from the University of Michigan. She received a Professional Theatre Program Fellowship in Acting, performing with the APA and ACT Repertory Companies while on the Ann Arbor campus. Packer started her professional career as an actress in Toronto before moving to Los Angeles, where she continued working on stage, film, and TV. She wrote and performed sketch comedy in New York City and Los Angeles and has completed two screenplays. Her experience at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, teaching the Holocaust in their original museum, afforded her the opportunity to dig deeper into what was happening in our country and in Europe during that critical period in history and the impact it had on her own family.

Deborah Packer
Deborah Packer, Author
thomdeborah@earthlink.net