鈥淲hen I was a little girl my dad would sit me on his knee and tell me about helping people. He would sing You are my Sunshine, he would pull out a photo album and show me pictures of a family in Germany and tell me their story.鈥�
This was the memory Marie Donais Calder shared when asked how her journey to publishing the 25-book The Other Side series began. It took Donais Calder 19 years to write the series that was inspired by her father and the Second World War.
The series is focused Donais Calder's father Ed Donais, who disobeyed a direct order and helped a German family from dying of starvation.
But much of the book is also set in Alida, where Ed Donais鈥� wife Frances was raising their young family.
In May 1998, Calder's mother decided she wanted to go to Germany to meet the family that her husband had saved. Donais Calder, knowing how important this was to her mother, wrote letters that were translated into German, to every family with the last name Schmidt in the area where her father had been stationed all those years ago.
By the end of August 1998, Calder's mother was sitting down with the family in Germany.
鈥淲e had gotten a fax saying 'happy to have gotten your letter we are the family we are seeking,鈥欌�� Calder states.
It took Calder many years before her books were published. 鈥淚 decided that if my work was worthy I would find a publisher, so that was another journey in itself.鈥�
She had sent many letters to publishers but to no avail. Four years after her last attempt at finding a publisher, she received a phone call from the owner of Borealis Press.
鈥淚magine my surprise four years later I was down in Florida in February, and I got a call from the owner of Borealis Press and they told me they received my manuscript.鈥�
Calder explains, they have been her publishers ever since.
Calder's first book, the Other Side of War, was published on July 17, 2010, which would have been her father鈥檚 birthday.
Calder continues to write. Her next book will be titled Forever in the Clouds and will be about the 21 men who were training as pilots in Estevan who lost their lives when the cargo plane they were returning on from Minot, N.D., crashed, killing all of them.
Calder hopes this book will be coming out in March of 2021 but cannot confirm this as of yet.听
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Author Marie Donais Calder with one of her books in the Other Side Series. Most of the books are partially set in Alida. File photo
