KENNEBUNK – The story begins in 1939, on the eve of World War II. Eva is a young Jewish girl growing up in Hungarian wine country. The story, now a book, “Snowflake on a Spider’s Web,” continues through the war, and beyond, and is billed as a love story in a horrific time.

Eva’s story came as a dream to Patti Laughlin Fogt more than 25 years ago. It lingered with her as she raised her children, as she wrote children’s books, and as she became a nurse.

Now, the book has been published, but Fogt is not stopping with just one.

“I had this novel in mind for 25 years,” said Fogt on a recent day.” It has been building, this is not an overnight thing, I am working on a sequel. It will take Eva through her whole life.”

Fogt, a travel nurse, has been in Kennebunk since October, and will leave at the end of this month. She will take a vacation in Maine and New Hampshire, then  head to her home near Charlotte, North Carolina, for a brief respite before she takes on another assignment.

She has been a travel nurse for a year, after many years with the Veterans Administration. A family illness – her sister had a brain tumor – meant Fogt needed a job with more flexibility, to help care for her, she said so she began taking travel assignments.

Fogt studied fashion design in Manhattan as a young woman, and then studied licensed practical nursing after a divorce.

“I needed a job that was always hirable,” she said. “This is a very solid job.”

As she worked, and when her daughters were young, she wrote children’s stories, progressing onto developing her novel, which was published in August.

While the dream propelled her to write the story of Eva, she also drew on her own family’s history – learning only after she died that her paternal grandmother was Jewish.

“A lot of people in that time period didn’t want to tell people about their religion,” she said. And her grandmother had converted to Christianity, said Fogt, but each December, among the Christmas decorations in her home, there tended to be a candelabra in the window, which Fogt later learned was a menorah.

“I loved her so much, it electrified something in me,” she said, and so she began putting her dream to paper.

Fogt said she has enjoyed her time in Kennebunk, where she works at Huntington Common and recently popped in at Kennebunk Free Library to drop off a copy of her book.

“I’ve fallen in love with Maine,” she said, “I got to see the fall foliage, and a big taste of winter.” She plans to visit Acadia National Park and the Ice Castles in neighboring New Hampshire before she makes her way south.

And there is some good news on the horizon – her sister’s tumor is benign, and she is doing much better, said Fogt. And she is looking forward to some summer fun – Fogt said she has been invited to host to a couple of book signings at the Hemingway Festival in Key West, Florida, in July along with Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, who wrote Ernest’s Way, a travel guide of the places her great-grandfather, Ernest Hemingway, lived and visited.

These days, though workdays tend to be lengthy, Fogt continues developing the sequel to her first novel, “Snowflake on a Spider’s Web,” which is available at Amazon and Walmart.com and in other locations.

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