Patricia Furstenberg, Writer of Historical Fiction, Children's Books
Travel via Stories
How did the boy born in Sighișoara, Transylvania, come to spend most of his youth among the people who threatened his homeland?
1442 – 1448: Captive in the Ottoman world, while his life hung in balance, young Vlad’s fate depended not only on the actions of his older brother and father, but also on the shifting alliances and ambitions of European powers beyond his reach.
Continue reading “Young Vlad III, Part 2: Captive in the Ottoman World – Where He Lived”
Following young Vlad Dracula through 15th century Transylvania and Wallachia to: Sighișoara, Târgoviște, Gallipoli and Eğrigöz.
When we picture Vlad the Impaler, or Vlad Dracula, we tend to picture him in a castle: dark stone, narrow windows, a throne, perhaps the mountains rising behind him. Vlad did not spend his life in one castle, one principality, or even one political world. Not even on one continent.
To follow Vlad’s life is to follow a landscape of shifting power: Târgoviște, the princely capital; Transylvania and its fortified towns; the roads crossing the Carpathians; the Ottoman world where he was held hostage; the Hungarian royal court; and, eventually, the battlefields and forests through which he fought his way, always back to Wallachia.
Each left something behind: a language, an allegiance, a military lesson, a memory of captivity, or an enemy who would later become an ally.
Continue reading “Where Did Vlad the Impaler Live? Part 1: Sighișoara, Târgoviște, Gallipoli, and Eğrigöz”
Celebrate with me the publication day of The Book That Should Have Been Lost !
1450: Walk beside the young Vlad Dracula and Kate Webber (When Secrets Bloom) from Roman Fortress to Kronstadt before history became legend.
Continue reading “The Book That Should Have Been Lost – It’s Publication Day!”
There are cities in Transylvania that do not simply sit on the map, they remember. They carry the sediment of centuries like bark around an old trunk. Brașov, know as Corona or Kronstadt in medieval times, is one of those places. In When Secrets Bloom Brașov does appear only as a backdrop. It breathes. It resists. It watches.
Because to write about a place is to write against forgetting.
Readers will discover Brașov as a setting in my story Kate’s Letter featured in our historical fiction anthology Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope.
Continue reading “Real Places in Historical Fiction: Brașov in When Secrets Bloom”
We are creatures of imagination and we understand the world by telling stories about it. Before chronicles hardened into dates and rulers. Before ink fixed memory into law. Stories softened fear, explained loss, they gave shape to grief. In Transylvania, where mountains fold memory into stone and winter teaches patience, stories do not merely entertain. They endure.
Continue reading “If History Forgets, Who Remembers? Hidden Truths in When Secrets Bloom”