Joseph R. Costa

Hello and welcome.

I have always enjoyed reading books. While writing has been part of my work all my life, I never considered writing a novel until later in retirement when I became interested in writing about my mother’s story of immigrating to the US from Nazi Germany before World War II. A great many things described in my first book "Kätchen’s Story" are based on her memories, photos, and papers. I still have her German passport with a swastika on the front and an immigration visa stamp inside. After an initial version of her known history, I broadened the story to bring out other interesting historical aspects of the times. A family friend was a Luftwaffe pilot whose bomber was shot down over England during the Battle of Britain. He became a prisoner of war held in Canada where he worked for a farmer and learned beekeeping. So I researched and was fascinated to find how lucky those prisoners were. Having always had a interest in history, I make a great effort to accurately portray the events and conditions of the times.

The “True Friends” books are set in Spain in the late 1500s (the time of Cervantes). My father’s parents were Portuguese immigrants from the Azores. While my family is not from Spain, I feel a distant connection, being raised on an almond orchard in the Mediterranean climate of the Sacramento Valley. For some years, I have been interested in writing a story set in those times and finally began in earnest when trying to make productive use of my time homebound during the pandemic. The books are meant to be an entertaining tale about close friends and Spanish life in those times.

I was raised on a farm in rural northern California. After attending college in the Midwest, I became a naval officer and spent twenty years in the Navy, followed by several years as a naval consultant. I am happily married and living in retirement near where I grew up. Unfortunately, I am not the marketing, social media, or blogger type, so I have not been able to do marketing justice to my books. But selling books was not my objective. I get great pleasure in reading comments from readers saying that they enjoyed my books. Everyone likes praise and I am no different.