Padlocked (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781935970576)

International Book Awards 2026 Finalist, Cross-Genre Category

In the afterlife, your past isn't over. It's waiting for you.

Ordinary people are swept into an extraordinary storm of life-altering circumstances as Nazi Germany invades Poland in 1939. Each decision they make seals a fate, binding strangers in an unbreakable chain of consequence. In this tense, visionary tale, every action echoes into the afterlife.

Two foreign photojournalists, an American and a Spaniard, are trapped between armies at Festungsfront Oder-Warthe-Bogen, along Poland's western border with Germany. It is Hank's last overseas assignment, and he's been counting the days until he can go home to North Carolina to be with his family. Rafe fled Spain after the dictator, Francisco Franco, targeted his family. They will find themselves embedded with the Polish, Nazi, and Soviet forces at varying times, forcing them to face moral and ethical decisions in their struggles to survive.

A young woman is separated from her sister in Warsaw as the Nazis encircle it. Agata made a vow that she would return to take Elsa to safety, but soldiers and barbed wire prevent her from entering the newly established Jewish sector. When she discovers her sister was taken by train to a work camp near Krakow, she navigates her war-torn country in search of her. Her quest will force her to confront a Hell on Earth to find her.

A young man joins the Jungdeutsche Partei, or the Young German Party. Once bullied as a child, Max's new affiliations promote him to a position where he can dictate life or death and settle scores. In order to thrive under Nazi occupation, he makes daily choices that have the power to erode humanitarian principles and scruples.

While they don't know one another at the start of their journeys, each will make decisions that have the power to transform them and place them on paths that ultimately converge on January 27, 1945, as the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front opened the gates to Auschwitz-Birkenau for all the world to witness.

This is ultimately a story about the strength of love, courage, faith, and resilience in the face of unimaginable hatred and obsession with power, and how every decision we make places us further along specific paths.

Author: P. M. Terrell
ISBN-10: 1935970577
ISBN-13: 9781935970576
Publisher: Drake Valley Press
Language: English
Published: 03/30/2026
Pages: 492
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.24lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.99d