About
I have completed my first draft of my book, "Please Look After This Girl". It is narrative non-fiction/memoir. It is an interesting journey from technical writer to an emotional story teller. I have loved every moment.
Professional bio:
Crystal has worked for over twenty years improving safety in organizations such as DuPont, Metso, and Valspar. Crystal’s experience includes chemical, mining, paper, construction, consulting and general and heavy manufacturing sectors with extensive experience establishing safety management systems and re-tooling the safety function within an organization. She is a Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP) and is the author of several published articles in Professional Safety magazine. Crystal has also reviewed books pre-publication for Elsevier Limited, Oxford UK, a leading global academic publisher.
Featured Work
Please Take Care of This Girl
Renate Bial was a real- life Paddington Bear. 'Please Look After This Girl' is the story of her life. Michael Bond, creator of Paddington Bear (Please Look After this Bear), said he was thinking of Jewish child refugees in London as well as evacuee children when he created his character.
Life’s cards were stacked against Renate. She was born into a Jewish family in Germany and her father died when she was two and a half. How would she survive? Could she thrive?
Please Look After This Girl shows her life in Germany, from a cake-loving youngster harassed by a quirky older brother, to an early teen patrolling the streets to divert people away from racist thugs, to crunching through the glass of broken Jewish shop windows, to arguing with a Gestapo officer about leaving the country. Will her mother be able to join her in England?
Renate has serious difficulty learning English. Cinema and one kind family help. As WWII escalates, Renate's brother suffers the horrendous voyage onboard the 'HMT Dunera' (The Dunera Boys, movie) to Australia for internment as an 'Enemy Alien'. Renate is blitzed with everyone else in London. She takes refuge for a while in the Midlands, where the bombs also fall. As Fire Warden, back in London, she has a close encounter with a V2 flying bomb.
Renate has a mother who drinks too much and a rich uncle who lords it over her. Her brother remains quirky, eccentric, harassing. One day he makes tear gas in the bathroom. He would later design electronics for Concorde.
Renate knows the Austrian violinist, Dr. Arnold Rosé, father of Alma Rosé (Playing for Time by Fania Fenelon) who plays his Stradivarius in the air raid shelters and his friend, the Austrian cellist, who also wants to play her body.
Renate tells her own story, with the help of her daughter Crystal, from an old people’s home in Atlanta.
