The Malice of Silence
Gary W. Toyn
Type: Beta project
Genre: Historical fiction, thriller
Word count: 90,000
A buried journal. A dying Holocaust witness. A dark family secret hidden for fifty years. When journalist Laima Paulauskas arrives in Lithuania as the USSR collapses, she discovers the long-lost eyewitness account of the Ponary massacre. It launches her into a life-and-death race to save this unique historical record before powerful nationalist forces can silence them both. For good.
Lithuania, 1941. A young Jewish witness records the massacres at Ponary. He writes down names, faces, and evidence, then buries his journal before disappearing into the chaos.
Fifty years later, someone wants it found. Others want it gone forever.
In 1990, Lithuanian-American journalist Laima Paulauskas arrives in a newly independent Lithuania to write her grandfather’s biography, a revered national hero. Instead, she uncovers a dying witness, a hidden journal, and a truth that could shatter everything she thought she knew.
The journal does more than document Nazi crimes. It reveals something far more dangerous.
As nationalist forces close in, determined to erase the past, Laima becomes a target. The deeper she digs, the higher the cost, and trust becomes dangerous.
Some truths were buried for a reason.
And some people will kill to keep them that way.
Gary W. Toyn is a critically acclaimed American author whose work explores courage, resilience, and moral conviction in history’s darkest moments. His novel From Malice to Ashes was a BookLife Editor’s Pick by Publishers Weekly and praised by Kirkus Reviews. He is also the author of For Malice and Mercy and The Quiet Hero, a biography of a Medal of Honor recipient at Iwo Jima. A former journalist, Toyn first traveled to Lithuania in 1990, interviewing independence leaders including Vytautas Landsbergis in the final days of Soviet rule. That experience became the foundation for the Malice and Mercy trilogy. He lives in Salt Lake City, USA.
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