1943: 18-year old Arnold Kessel and the 5th Division/81st Tank Battalion hit the beach at Normandy. In two days he's baptized by fire as Patton/Hodges race through France to trap 100,000 Germans in the Falaise Gap. Surviving the Hurtgen Forest & Battle of the Bulge, Arnold arrives on the banks of the Elbe, 50 miles from Berlin. After serving in Korea, Kessel puts the six Bronze Stars he's earned in the wars, in a box and forgets them, but he can't forget what he saw and did. Karen Schutte artfully pulls her readers into the harrowing depths and struggles of a WWII Sherman Tank Commander, the freezing struggle against the North Koreans and Chinese, and the haunting memories of endless battles that shadow Kessel's life.

Karen Wamhoff Schutte is the first born daughter of Beata and the late Arnold Wamhoff of Emblem, Wyoming. She was born and raised in a German Lutheran farming community in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming. She attended the first eight grades in a two-room school house, later graduating from Greybull High School and earning a bachelor degree in Design Marketing at the University of Wyoming.

Karen and Mike Schutte were married in 1962 and are the parents of four grown sons and nine grandchildren. After raising her family, Karen owned and operated her own interior design firm as an ASID professional designer for the next twenty-five years. She is member of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers; Colorado Independent Publishers; Independent Book Publishing Association; The Wyoming Historical Society; The American Historical Society of Germans from Russia. She is a former Soroptimist and participated in numerous community groups.

Upon retirement in 2000, Karen began to think about simply documenting her knowledge of her family's immigration and all the stories she heard at the feet of her grandparents. As a first born grand-daughter and great grand-daughter she felt compelled to create a record of these family stories, not realizing she had just opened Pandora's Box. Documenting, the historical research, and the family stories consumed her as she began to write.

"When I write a book, a story of life, I am there, it is happening to me as I visualize the entire scene, the dialogue, the drama and conflict. I feel like I am leaving a legacy through my books as well as loving the journey of this new purpose in life. Before I begin a new novel, I go through my files and organize everything I have collected about the subject. I make a mental chronological path for the story as I immerse myself in other books of the same genre. This prepares me-gets me in the mood of the time and the scenarios about which I am about to craft. It was never my dream to become a writer, or to write a novel, but this book is my fourth and I'm not finished yet. I have two more on the back burner-just simmering. Becoming a writer means being creative enough to find time in your life for writing. It's become my passion, my purpose!