Kasia's Story
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Reception of the Jews in Poland, by Jan Matejko
Powered by the presence and development of two extraordinary women who were drawn together by chance, circumstance, and courage, Kasia's Story demonstrates how history comes to life…a novel that appeals at many levels, and belongs in any serious historical fiction library.
D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
Kasia's Story
1519
Krakow, Poland
Before his death, Kasia and her husband Melchior had set out on a spiritual journey to decide if the God of the Church was the same God they felt in their heart. Now Kasia finds herself at the eye of a perfect storm, centered on the question of how to treat Poland's Jewish people. Meanwhile up in Krakow's Wawel Castle, having brought the Renaissance into her adopted land, Poland's new Queen Bona means to play her own hand in the nation's most important decisions.
One step at a time life carries them both, Kasia and Bona, as it does each of us, on a journey of self-discovery.
An eighty year old goldsmith's widow and the young Queen of Poland. Two lives so different yet drawn by the times into a harrowing moment of truth.
Katarzyna Weiglowa --"Kasia"
Queen Bona Sforza
Image: Rafal Hadiewicz' portrait of his mother
Other players
King Zygmunt the Elder
Stanczyk, the King's fool
by Jan Matejko
Hurrem Haseki, wife
of the Sultan Suleiman
Leonardo da Vinci,
who while painting The Last Supper, lived in Milan with the young
Bona Sforza
In KASIA'S STORY, rooted in historical events, we walk with the elderly widow Katarzyna Weiglowa through the last twenty years of her life. A powerful mix of deep compassion, of the kind only the best of us are troubled with, and a need to find her own way and be more than she was, tears her from her quiet life of family and friends. Struggling to hold back a wave of anti-Jewish legislation the country's intellectual elites turn to her to take their message of love and acceptance to legislators gathered for the annual Sejm.
Meanwhile through her own daily joys and battles, political and marital, and while surviving deep personal tragedies, Bona Sforza slowly awakens to a deeper sense of who she is, and how she came to be that way.
As a flood of fear and xenophobia overtakes the nation, Kasia becomes the first woman ever invited to address the Polish legislature. By throwing Christ's words at the assembled patriarchy she is charged with heresy, bringing her life into a climactic intersection with the Queen's.
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Krakow's Wawel Castle, with Bishop Piotr Gamrat and the fool Stanczyk, two important characters in Kasia's Story. Painting by Jan Matejko, 1878.
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of my favorite books about
the conflict between spirituality and religion
Why does a writer take up the cross of writing a book?
Accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, William Faulkner put it this way.
"....[Mankind endures because we have] a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance...The poet's/writer's duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past."
Contact the author: parejkok@uwstout.edu
And while you're here
also available on Amazon:
Follow Pliny the Elder, who died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E., through his remarkable life.
"The dialogue flows easily, the research is extremely thorough but smoothly incorporated, and the atmosphere is well-evoked: it adds up to a book that is very strongly recommended."
Review, Historical Novel Society
5:30 a.m., Nov. 9, ’24.
Howz this for lemonade? Because of my cancer, I have chemo infusions. To counter the effects of my chemo infusions I am taking steroids. My steroids disrupt my sleep. This morning I woke at 3:30 (and maybe slept some since? Last night was the obverse. I didn’t fall asleep til 3:30.) This morning lying half awake, with a chemo-addled brain, this is what my personal navigation system came up with to get us out of the political pickle we are in. The route comes with a caution: It was planned at the wee hours of the morning by a brain that has in almost 80 years shown itself to not always be so trustworthy, and at the moment ls struggling through a chemo’d brain fog.
To travel towards our goal/goals (which we need to thoughtfully define, without making a wrong turn down the road of infinite bickering!) we must consider the following:
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Is it too late?
1a. Has the electorate handed over power to the “Evil Empire” and will never get it back? I.e. ill the Orbanization of the country be irreversible? One of our jobs then is to Trump-proof as much of the infrastructure of democracy as we can.
1b. Has global warming become irreversible? If so, what then becomes our tasks and strategies to reach them? (I admit, that’s a hard one.)
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Since what we have been doing isn’t working, what do we turn to that might, for the ’26 and ’28 elections?
2a. Are we willing to adapt their working strategies, both in campaigning and in governing, to our ends? Which?
First, I suggest not falling into a morass of lies, tho they have shown that lying can be a successful strategy. Instead, I suggest, as they did, setting aside important issues (which?) and focusing, as they have (immigration and the economy) on one or two that the electorate can identify with.
Secondly, I suggest we sit back and watch as they are unable to fix either of those issues, even tho they might convince the electorate they have. So one task is to prepare ourselves to convince the electorate they haven’t.
Thirdly, I propose that in the coming year (before ’26) or years (before ’28) it will become easier to convince the electorate of global warming’s seriousness. This, I suggest, means we allow global warming to shoulder aside (see para above) issues like reproductive rights, cultural issues that they have labeled as “woke,”and foreign policy (identified, after the state of democracy, as important issues for voters.) They all deeply important issues. But we did not win on them. By using terms like “demonic or “evil,” Maga convinced the electorate they WE were at least equally the threat to democracy, which allowed them to win on the other issues. In short, I suggest we get on a steep learning curve (the navigation system warns us the elevation gain is daunting!) to convince the electorate of how dangerous climate change is. On the one hand time is on our side, as that will become easier (the elevation gain will level off), on the other hand we face two tipping points, one the loss of democratic infrastructure, the second the eventual irreversibility of the warming.
Fourthly, and maybe this is tongue in cheek, maybe not, we thank MAGA for taking on immigration and the economy, both of which needed work. Then we point out how they failed at fixing them, and create convincing strategies that would work.
If there is a fire in a theater, or a tsunami coming up the bay, we don’t use democratic methods to choose what to do. Since MAGA is willing to sacrifice democracy towards their ends, and will have already done the ground-work in that, we should hold our noses and adopt of their campaigning and governing strategies to wrest power back into our hands. Which strategies and how to use them will require careful thought. And always, remembering that whatever strategies we adopt, they are (like executive actions) context- related and temporary.
That’s all, folks.