'We Were The Lucky Ones' Author To Talk At MOCO Libraries Event

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MD — In "We Were the Lucky Ones" author Georgia Hunter tells a fictionalized version of the story of her family escaping Europe during World War II.

Hunt will join a virtual Montgomery County Public Libraries event on Wednesday, March 30 at 2 p.m. to talk about her published novel, her upcoming novel, and her family's story.

“In 2000, a family reunion opened my eyes to the astounding war stories of my grandfather and his family,” said Hunter in a news release. “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.’”

Her story begins in the spring of 1939 where the Kurcs, a Jewish family, live in Poland, and it follows them as family members are separated in an attempt to survive the war.

"One of the cool things about this story is because the [Kurc family] split up, over five continents and six years, you get this global understanding of what it was like at that time," said Hunter in an interview with Publishers Weekly in 2016. "The other thing that really shocked me was that, while they were struggling every day to stay alive, they were also getting engaged, getting married in secret. So I saw the historical side, but I also saw what it was like to be human—to get by day to day, holding onto these little pieces of their old lives."

Thomas Kail, the director of Broadway musicals “Hamilton” and “In the Heights," has optioned "We Were the Lucky Ones" as a limited TV series, Montgomery County said in its news release.

Register for the event here.