God, Give Us Wings
The air raid sirens wailed their cries of oncoming grief unusually early one morning in the city of Vilnius, Lithuania during the summer of 1944, jolting the author’s father, Felicius, from his sleep. His first thought was to thank God that he had sent his wife and two children to the countryside.The premonition of danger was so strong that he dressed hastily, grabbed the briefcase containing his family’s documents, and ran to hide. The bombing was brutal. When the dust settled, he saw his home reduced to a pile of smoking rubble. The Soviets were returning.At that moment, Felicius took the first step on a journey to rejoin his family and lead them to safety. He did not know that it was a journey that would last more than seven years.Nor did he know that it would stretch across two continents, embracing on the one hand, the acts of cruelty, injustice, and bureaucratic indifference that ravaged the refugees streaming out of Eastern Europe, and on the other, unexpected acts of kindness that would spell the difference between life and death.Along the way, Felicius and his family are caught up in a whirlpool of harrowing events, such as the bone-chilling night in 1945 when they are forced to leave their refuge in Poland, unprepared and on foot, or face imminent delivery into the hands of the Soviets. They are saved when a friend driving a cart appears and offers a means of escape.By writing “God, Give Us Wings”, Felicia Prekeris Brown has done more than just create a family memoir. She has chronicled the experiences of an entire generation of refugees whose lives were shattered between the clashing fists of Nazi and Soviet oppression.Seen through the innocent eyes of a young child, the events in the book showed me that the relentless march of human pain does indeed echo with acts of remarkable kindness, giving wing to hope for refugees everywhere. - The Lithuania Tribune