Hello and welcome to my little corner of the world! My name is Callie Trautmiller and I live in Wisconsin (yes, I’m a Packer fan) with my husband and three kids.

I have a restless soul and sleep is a frenemy of mine…always reliable and consistent, but I can’t complain too much because it has led me to become a lover of books!!! Ever since I was a little, I can remember sitting in the tent in the backyard reading scary stories (literally… “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”), and through my teenage years, I picked up classics such as “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn” and “Little Women.” My first treasured chapter book was called “Sugar Blue” and I remember sneaking off to the garage to read it on rainy days (slightly dramatic, I know).

My love for reading and writing got pushed aside in college when for some reason, there were expectations to read the material related to class. After marriage, bottles replaced books during sleepless nights and it wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I rediscovered my love for writing.

As I’ve gotten older, I appreciate learning new things. I love knowing something about something. Or at least knowing enough to know what kinds of questions to ask. I decided to take a writing class taught by a retired writing professor about five years back and a writing prompt for a poem triggered the idea for Becoming American: A World War II novel. The poem turned into a short story, which grew into 65,000 words.

Many people have heard of the atrocities that happened by the Imperial Army of Japan and the Nazis during World War II, but I’ve found that few people (and even less youngers), know of the thousands of Americans who were sent to internment camps within the United States based on their heritage. The more I researched this, along with the heroism portrayed by the 100th Infantry Battalion (comprised mostly of Hawaiian Japanese-American Territorial Guard) and the 442nd Regiment (comprised of Japanese-American volunteers from internment camps) and the impact they had on World War II, the more driven I became to write this book.

My hope is to create thought-provoking discussions and bring to light historical events that might otherwise become lost in history’s pages. I appreciate you taking the time to listen.