In 2000, a fam­i­ly reunion opened my eyes to the astound­ing war sto­ries of my grand­fa­ther and his fam­i­ly. Eight years lat­er, armed with a dig­i­tal voice recorder and a mole­skin note­book, I set off to unearth and record my family’s sto­ry. I spent near­ly a decade tra­vers­ing the globe, inter­view­ing fam­i­ly, and dig­ging up records from every pos­si­ble source I could think of, even­tu­al­ly piec­ing togeth­er the bones of what would become my nov­el We Were the Lucky Ones.