Dear Sandra

About the Book

Dear Sandra is a horror-mystery that takes place in a small New England coastal city in the year 1976. It traces the lives of several people who were mysteriously connected during the Holocaust, over 30 years earlier. Their story is told through memories, flashbacks, a diary and other writings from the past, and especially through some old letters to Sandra. The novel is based on careful historical research, and while the characters and events are fictional, the historical references are accurate and astutely paced. As the plot unfolds, the reader gradually discovers more and more about the relevance of these people, and their story, to an understanding of the causes of the historical Holocaust. In this way, the novel becomes a catalyst, encouraging readers to think deeply about themselves within the context of perhaps the most misguided ethical catastrophe in the history of mankind, and helps them to formulate meaningful questions to ask about real ethical dilemmas in their own lives.

About the Author

I recently retired after 33 years as a teacher, and Social Studies Department Head, in the Mansfield, Massachusetts Public Schools. My special interest and expertise is in ethics education and in integrating ethics themes directly into established secondary school curriculums. It was within this context that I wrote Dear Sandra.

The history textbooks found in American schools today have been so excised of controversial content and so stripped of social conflict as to be rendered values neutral, and utterly useless for promoting ethics education. Conforming to long lists of banned words and the perceived need to provide "equality" to every conceivable group, or event, has led to the creation of enormous bland encyclopedic tomes, with little or no narrative excitement or recognizable thematic purpose. In the end, this has become a nightmare for teachers trying to interest and engage young minds in the study of history.

Today, more than ever, it is necessary for teachers to supplement their classes constantly with compelling inputs or risk losing students to the mind-deadening drudgery of required textbook reading. Although there are some novels set in historic periods that are quite good, none that I have found are accurate enough, or rich enough in relevant historical detail, to coincide with comprehensive history curriculums.

As an educator facing this need for over thirty years, I began writing my own historical fiction and using it with my classes. These readings grew gradually from short stories, carefully set within real historical periods, to full novels suitable to support an entire term's work. I found that I could also structure my writing to illustrate values conflicts emerging from the events of the past and greatly strengthen my classes with ethics-rich reading material. I wrote them because they engaged and motivated my students and made my classes more meaningful and this made me a better teacher.