Q. What is your background? Where are you from, where did you grow up, etc.?

A. I was born in New York City. When I was four we moved to Belgium. I returned to the States just before World War II, and was in the U.S. Navy during the war. My family comes from the region where this story took place, and I lived in Europe at the time. After graduating from Yale, I became an aerospace engineer, and later a lawyer. I also studied creative writing at UCLA. I'm married, with three children. My father was born in France, near Strasbourg, on the Rhine, right across from the Rhineland, which plays a major role in A Break in the Storm.

Q. How did your interest in writing develop?

A. I've wanted to write for almost as long as I can remember. As a child I was often lonely, and it's possible that my early desire to write may have been connected with that, but that's just a theory. Also, the schools I attended placed a lot of emphasis on writing skills.

Q. What is your novel about?

A. It's a story of fictional characters, set against a historical background, like Gone with the Wind with its Civil War background. I didn't know this as I wrote it, but the readers and the critics says it's filled with suspense. There's a German officer with an ugly past, his younger, high-principled subordinate, and the remarkable woman they both pursue. Not just a love triangle, more a triangle of intrigue. Also a nuclear physicist facing persecution, and a man who wants revenge for his family's massacre. The background is Hitler's giant bluff in 1936 in reoccupying the forbidden Rhineland buffer zone, followed by the Allies' catastrophic failure to act, which wasted the last opportunity to prevent World War II.

Q. Why did you decide to write A Break in the Storm?

A. Above all, my object was to tell a story that was compelling. I hate stories that bore the reader. As the background I chose the 1936 Rhineland Crisis, that made World War II unavoidable. I was living in Europe at the time and recall those events vividly, and I wanted to convey the look and the feel of that place and time.

Q. Why did you title your book A Break in the Storm? What does it mean?

A. It refers to the interval between the two World Wars. The storm is the storm of death that was World War I. After the end of World War I it was believed that there would never be another. But it turned out to be only a break in the storm.

Q. What kind of research took place to write your book?

A. First, research into the history itself. I'm not a professional historian, but for years the subject has fascinated me, and I've studied it extensively. Of course, my having lived in Europe at the time helped a great deal. Also, research into the details, military ranks, the types of cars that were in use, types of airplanes and their speeds, all that sort of thing.

Q. Is A Break in the Storm based on your own life in any way? If so, please explain:

A. Not specifically. There is no character in it based on me or on anyone I've known. But I believe that characters' thoughts and feelings, if the reader is to find them believable, must come from the writer, not necessarily ready-made, but at least from a fragment here and there. Also I've had this kind of experience. I once visited a man in his office. There was a female receptionist in the outer office. I had never met them before. For some reason, maybe a tone of voice or a facial expression, I sensed that there had been something between them that had cooled off long ago, and that her present employment had something to do with that. This gave me an idea for Hilda, one of the minor characters in A Break in the Storm, not her whole character, but just an aspect of it.

Q. What are your favorite books?

A. I enjoy books about historical events or persons, not academic books, but popular ones, such as McCullough's Truman, The Great Bridge, and John Adams, among others. Although I had little interest in history in school, my interest in it grew and saw history's relevance to our lives. A random selection from other books I've enjoyed in recent years would include The Horse Whisperer, Grisham's books, The Remains of the Day, The Bridges of Madison County, and books on science, real science, not science fiction.