Read BONNIE TOEWS
At the Crossroads of Humanity
For INTRIGUE that keeps you guessing
Novel in Progress
Hills of Tears
At daybreak, rays of light raced across the hills of Rwanda, touching the wet grass until every dewdrop glistened like tears streaming over the land.
Truth before Service
While on assignment in Rwanda, a TV journalist
discovers her parents' hidden past
links her to a mass murderer and plants her
in the crosshairs of an assassin.
A popular TV anchorwoman, Kendra Warren, has everything—wonderful parents, wealth and a celebrity career. But there are gaps in her life. She doesn't know where she has been or what she has done.
German drug czar Baldur Ketmann feels abandoned when his identical twin brother dies. In grief and desolation, he discovers his twin masterminded the release of an untested anti-malaria drug issued to peacekeepers in
Ordered to investigate the claims of an informant warning the UN of planned genocide in Rwanda, private security agent Rhys Jamieson, a man of mixed heritage, is forced to deal with long-ago demons.
When Kendra's TV ratings drop, she fears losing her job. Just one news-breaking scoop could put her back on top, so she returns to the heart of Africa, where she witnesses the United Nations’ devastating failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda. When one peacekeeper commits suicide, Kendra is convinced the anti-malaria drug is behind the soldier's mental breakdown as she took the same drug on a news assignment to Angola and blames it for her blackouts. The drug trail leads to Baldur Ketmann, but just as she is about to break the story on camera, Rhys Jamieson presents evidence of her secret past and her connection to the drug scandal. Kendra is not who she has always believed she is. With her life now in shambles, Kendra struggles with the lies of her parents, her shameful past and the debilitating side effects of the anti-malaria drug Ketmann's company has produced, while, lurking in the shadows, an invisible assassin stalks her through this pulse-pounding nightmare of deception and retribution. He's already killed a former spymaster. If she gets too close to the truth, he's been ordered to kill her as well. Settings: Time: 1994 v v v From the author of "Surrender the Wind," Rita Gerlach: I think when we hear the word 'Rwanda' images of such tragic proportions come to mind. Many of us want to shield ourselves from the inhumanity of the genocide that took place there. But, it is not something that can be swept away with time. Bonnie Toews' novel, Hills of Tears, brings to the reader a story that not only brings awareness of man's inhumanity to man, woman, and child, but plants in our hearts a determination not to allow anything like this to occur again, and to denounce such actions in the world. It is a novel about survival and sacrifice. Her character Kendra Warren comes toe-to-toe with evil, at the same time as she faces a past that shatters her comfortable life. The reader connects with Kendra and with the story, due to Ms. Toews' talent for bringing a novel to life. Her page-turning narrative balances drama and intrigue with electric dialogue. v v v TRIBUTE This novel is written in tribute to the UN peacekeepers who stood their ground when the world turned its back on the genocide they witnessed, but especially to the one man who has never let us forget and the two women who uncovered the truth:
Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire (Ret.),
Force Commander of the
United Nations Assistance
(UNAMIR) 1993-1994, also author of
CTV’s host of W5 in October 1997,
Christine Nielsen,
who disclosed the anti-malarial drug scandal
and her researcher, Kit Melamed,
who discovered the official proof.
MOST RECENT NEWS REPORT
In the above picture, French soldiers appear to be training Hutus how to restrain their victims, but they may also be arresting actual war criminals responsible for the genocide in Rwanda. I do not have the facts when this photo was taken or about the circumstances concerning it. French soldiers stationed in
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
When I returned home from my magazine assignment to cover the humanitarian relief movement to Rwanda in 1994, I broke down crying to my husband, "I never held the hand of one child."
"What makes you think you were supposed to?" Wally asked.
"I believed God sent me--that my whole life was preparation for this one journey. I know God protected me, but I expected to be able to cuddle and comfort the children."
"And if you had held one child's hand?"
"I wouldn't have come home."
"God knows what's in your heart," he explained gently, "but that's not why He sent you. How many peacekeepers did you interview? How many were hurting because no one listened to what they saw and experienced?"
The traumatic suffering I absorbed as I listened to each one came back to me, and I understood.
"I was God's arms comforting them."
"That was your mission," my husband told me as he held me in his arms.
PLAN CANADA aids abandoned orphans in Haiti
Click on the photo to donate or call 1-800-387-1418 to make donations or text HAITI to 30333.
BBC Report of First Days of Rwandan Genocide
Go to this report in 1994 by a British broadcaster for the real story behind the UN's failure to protect the Rwandan people from mass murder, which was more efficient than the Nazi's Holocaust.
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Bonnie's won the SSMW Award
For outstanding writing, web
site or blog, Bonnie Toews
has received the SSMW
Award from Rita Gerlach,
author of the best selling
SURRENDER THE WIND.
SLOW AND EASY
My new blog for caregivers of people with Parkinson's disease.
