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At the Crossroads of Humanity

At the Crossroads of Humanity

Bonnie Toews grew up in Kirkland Lake, a mining town in Northern Ontario, Canada, and, to amuse herself, wrote her first novel at age ten about a flight nurse in World War II. Two of her favorite music teachers served as secret agents against Nazi Germany, and their experiences heightened her fascination with intrigue and espionage. She read all of Helen MacInnes' novels before Robert Ludlum became popular.

Through a career that has ranged from teacher to editorial director of 30 business magazines for the former national Southam Newspaper Group at its headquarters in Toronto, she has published more than 200 articles and won five Canadian business press awards.

On a special magazine assignment in 1994, she covered the delivery system of humanitarian relief to the war victims in Rwanda. The resulting mass of disease-ridden refugees were swarming the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) when she arrived, just after the massacre of 10 UN soldiers and an estimated one million Rwandans. As a result of that experience, the plight of children in war is a recurring theme in her fiction writing today.

In 2003, she appeared on Canada’s Mystery Channel in Mystery Ink with a panel of best-known Canadian mystery writers to discuss their novels, how they came up with the ideas and how they developed their plots.

Bonnie lives with her YEP pets--Yogi, the Toy Pomeranian; Esau and Pandora, Maine Coon cats--on the shores of Lake Ontario in a patch of paradise called Wilmot Creek.  

 Yogi

 Esau

 Pandora

About me:

Intrigue and espionage set in WWII have always fascinated me because two of my music teachers were part of that secret world. My singing coach was a member of the Dutch Resistance, and my piano teacher was a British double agent living in Berlin as a church organist in WWI and an officer in Allied Intelligence during WWII. Both were quiet individuals and their amazing bravery was hidden—ordinary people who did extraordinary things in times of great threat to individual freedom. That fascination evolved into my love of flying—so symbolic of feeling free—and desire to pursue the truth in writing. Though my novels are not based on their stories, my characters’ spiritualism and values are behind the theme of treason and triumph running through my Trilogy of Treason series.

As a novelist, my goal is to write about people who overcome betrayal and perilous odds in stories teeming with dramatic intrigue. My premise for writing is based on two simple questions: Why do men and women step up to the plate so willingly when called upon to do their duty for God, country and family? And what happens when everything they believe in fails? The answer to these questions is found in my Trilogy of Treason series.

The first of these books, THE CONSUMMATE TRAITOR, is the fictional disclosure of Churchill's race with Hitler to develop the atomic bomb in WWII as experienced by two women secret agents, Trudi and Ester. The second, now in development, traces England's betrayal of Russian Mennonites to Stalin during an investigative journalist's hunt for former Gestapo agents implanted in positions of NATO power. In the third and my current novel in progress, a TV newswoman discovers devastating connections to her own past while investigating the Rwandan genocide and assassination of a former WWII spymaster. Each story stands alone, yet some characters continue their lives through them. Each also tells a love story within the context of intrigue and suspense.

As I have delved deeper into my novel in progress partly set in Rwanda, I have grown more sensitive to the sacrifices our troops—Canadian and Americans—have made continuously since 2002 to offer Afghans a safer, more liberal and economically sound world to live in, according to our standards. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have lasted longer than it took to resolve World War II. My concern has stirred a "blog" I call HEART TUGS. . . at the Crossroads of Humanity. I also describe some of my personal experiences in Rwanda in 1994. Rita Gerlach, author of the newly released SURRENDER THE WIND from Abingdon Press, has awarded me with the "Primio Dardos" Award as a result, and I humbly thank her for the honor.

For intrigue that keeps you guessing, I hope you will remember to check out my novels.

E-mail: bonnie.toews@rogers.com