Julian Padowicz – författare

Kip and Amanda, sixty-ish protagonists from previous adventures, continue their humorously dysfunctional relationship as Kip is asked to be a father figure to a troubled fourteen-year-old and plans to spend a summer of male bonding under sail, while Amanda decides to reconcile her husband with his memory of his overbearing, non-nurturing, departed mother.Of course, neither plan works out as expected, but their failures will put their marriage on the line.

In an effort to keep her soul from going to hell, Kip's abusive, seventy-year-old former wife, Marsha, comes to visit him and Amanda, so she can make up for the grief she caused him over thirty years ago.In the process, she nearly destroys their life, causing Amanda to almost lose her thumb, Kip's beloved sailboat, Manda, to sail off with no one on board, Amanda to run off, and a variety of small calamities along the way.

After a prolonged sojourn in Europe, the senior newlyweds, Kip and Amanda return to the coastal village of Venice, Massachusetts.Kip is the kind of person who is accustomed to his bread always landing jam side down, so the retired literature professor has mixed feelings about the unexpected success of his new book. On one hand, he is thrilled more than he dares admit, even to himself. On the other, he is afraid that it's all a dream from which he will wake up bitterly disappointed.However, what awaits him on his return are adventures as diverse as being befriended by a thrill-seeking former Green Beret, getting analyzed by a group of partying psychologists, massaged by an outspoken woman colonel in the Israeli Army, and meeting his wife's very deadly real husband.It's the kind of thing that could only happen to the long-suffering "e;Kip"e; Kippur.

When Kip's boarding school roommate of fifty years ago, Alex Rappaport, shows up friendless and homeless on their doorstep, and Kip and Amanda take him in.Alex brings back childhood memories better left forgotten. But Alex also finds a surprise in the form of an old flame and a grandson he had no idea he had.

After a grueling and dramatic escape from occupied Poland in 1939, at age eight, Julian and his mother arrive in America in 1941 with big plans. Julian's beautiful, former socialite mother Barbara wants to write a memoir and regain her former social position. Julian just wants to fit his war-damaged psyche into the American way of life. As Barbara climbs her social ladder, she succeeds in opening for herself doors that few manage to open. In the process, she slams in Julian's face the very doors that other parents struggle to open for their children.

In this powerful and absorbing sequel to Mother and Me: Escape from Warsaw 1939 (ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Autobiography 2006), the author recalls his flight from the Nazis in Hungary as an 8-year-old boy with his resourceful and determined mother, Barbara.