The Upside of Hunger

"Beautiful, shocking, at times painful... the magnificently told story of a man who triumphed over the limitations of history to become his greatest self."

Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting true story of history, suspense, and beating the odds.

The life he was born into was too small for Adam Baumann. But would escaping Hungary cost him everything?

Based on a true story shared with the author over 400+ recorded interviews, this is the epic tale of a young man's survival as the world plunged into the darkest days of WW2.

Growing up in an isolated village in eastern Hungary between the great wars, Adam couldn't remember a time he hadn't yearned for more excitement, more freedom, and often more food. Locked up for theft at age nine, Adam's life took one tumultuous turn after another as Hitler plunged Europe into war.

From a 12-year-old runaway searching for food, to a 15-year-old shivering in the mud of a frozen foxhole on the Eastern Front, Adam's survival hung in the balance. When a Russian bullet found it's mark, Adam was catapulted into a series of captures and narrow escapes from enemy forces while Europe reeled from the final destruction and horror of WW2.

Never standing still, Adam struggled through war-torn landscapes to find his family, and began to build a life from the ashes, until the results of a medical examination at an American Embassy in Germany changed the course of his future forever.

100% of book sale profits are donated to a scholarship fund benefiting high school graduates needing financial assistance with post-secondary education. As you will read in The Upside of Hunger, scholarships would have been Adam's only means to an education, had the war not intervened. Similarly, the author's first year of college was largely funded by scholarships generously donated by the business community in her hometown.