As Claire huddles in the hallway of her school air raid sirens are blasting. Moments of terror elapse. Kids silently cover their heads and kneel on the floor, not knowing if this is a practice drill or the real thing - the last moments of their very existence! Turning sixteen is not so sweet when the year is 1962 and the threat of nuclear annihilation is imminent. Tenafly, a small town, just across the Hudson River from New York City, is Claire's home. But its proximity to the nation's largest city also puts it directly in the path of Russian missiles that could be launched at any moment as the world teeters on the edge of war thanks to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Visiting a bomb shelter gives Claire and her friends the chilling sense that they have peeked into a set for a play of the future, and they did not like what they saw. Those few locked inside the shelter would see nuclear winter when, and if, they ever came out. Those without a shelter would find their end sooner in the dramatic final explosions of missiles all around them. The reality of these alternatives shatter Claire's psyche. President Kennedy addresses the nation on the evening news: "The purpose of these bases (in Cuba) can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike against the Western Hemisphere." Panic builds to a point of total chaos. Retreating from the horrific reality of potential world destruction, Claire escapes into her imagination. With the world seeming to be on a track too awful to contemplate, will Claire find hope to survive in her family sanctuary on Lake Wanda? A work of historical fiction THE PRINCE OF LAKE WANDA takes the reader back to the tense time when the United States stood on the brink of nuclear war. Sixteen year-old Claire and an unlikely descendent of the Lenape tribe of Native Americans encounter the events that were shattering the national psyche with a mystical journey grounded in local history of Northern New Jersey.
About the Author: Nancy Simms Taylor grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey. Born in New York, her family moved to Tenafly before she started school. During the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) she lived the experience of being just a few miles from New York City when the threat of nuclear attack was imminent. The beauty of the land in Northern New Jersey where she grew up supplied inspiration for this work of historical fiction. A summer home in the rural mountains of Sussex County provided a balance to the hectic pace of growing up just across the Hudson River from New York City. She earned a Masters degree in Library Science from Emory University and is a librarian in South Carolina. Currently she and her husband live with their beautiful sable collie, Wendy. Comments and questions: princeoflakewanda@gmail.com