MIRANDA ARMSTADT
comes from a long line of Jews who've overcome all odds to succeed and thrive in America.
Her great-great grandparents were driven out of Ukraine in 1882, when it was still part of Russia, and forced to leave behind a thriving business and fold shirts for the shmata trade for $15 a week in New York City.
Two generations later, her grandfather graduated from Harvard in the 1920s and went on to build a publishing empire and the first major TV news program, which is still on air some 80 years later.
With headquarters in both NYC and Washington, DC, he knew major historical figures like 'Wild Bill' Donovan, every US president from the 1930s on, and all the major players behind the scenes of government.
On the other side of her family, her grandfather was a self-made industrialist, whose parents were penniless immigrants from Poland who never learned to speak English.
With that kind of DNA, it's no wonder she possesses the drive and determination that has taken her through careers in TV and digital news, entertainment, and now fiction writing.
Born in Europe while her father served in various US embassy posts, Armstadt was raised primarily in New York City, unaware of the true nature of both her parents' work with the government.
It wasn't until a decade after her father passed that she began digging deeper into volumes of her parents' letters and photos from abroad, as well as her father's State Dept. dossier.
What she discovered formed the impetus for her soon-to-be-published historical fiction novel about how intelligence agencies and the military recruit the covert talent that few people are privy to see first-hand.
She is now in her fifth (and final) year of research and writing on that geopolitical thriller, inspired by her parents’ time with the US State Department during the turbulent Cold War years of the 1950s.
Her research has included thousands of FOIA documents, including declassified Agency memos, State Department historical letters, and hundreds of photos.
With her personal understanding of those family members involved in media and business before, during and after WWII and the Cold War, she's created a fascinating blend of characters for her new novel.
Readers will meet a British viscount, a young Jewish Holocaust survivor from Zagreb, and the characters based on her own parents and grandparents in this dynamic look inside the workings of government intelligence.
Her first novel—‘Cut Back to Life’—was inspired by her own dramatic experience with a life-changing surgery, as well as her personal background in the entertainment industry as an actress, TV news anchor, and singer.
When not writing, Armstadt is on her 10th senior dog rescue and is an avid firearms enthusiast, with target skills taught by a retired E9 Marine, as well as by a former ATF undercover agent.
She also writes incisive commentaries about geopolitics in all its many forms:
https://miranda-armstadt.com/gee-oh-politics
and the current crisis of antisemitism across the world:
Miranda Armstadt
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