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Garrett L. Turke is a former clinical psychologist who has been a father, caregiver, and healing professional for over three decades. Originally from Los Angeles, California, he has a lifelong interest in anthropology and the human cultural experience. Beginning in childhood, Garrett has traveled the world extensively, including multiple trips to West Africa, Europe, the Mediterranean, and eastern Asia. His unique life experiences have allowed him to integrate and synthesize many different and diverse cultural frameworks into his philosophical and spiritual worldview. He believes in the power of unconditional human compassion and kindness in guiding the future of the human race.
In recent years, Garrett has turned to writing to express the life lessons that his experiences have taught and cultivated within him. His 2015 nonfiction release, 497 Nails, brought rave reviews about his caregiving and spiritual experiences with his father Walter, stricken with Alzheimer’s disease. Garrett’s 2018 follow-up to 497 Nails, There’s a Window to Heaven, is a short, pocket-sized book written in real time, documenting his father’s two-week long near-death experiences, while diagnosed with terminal pneumonia. These experiences, which entailed recurrent “visits” to a “shining city” accompanied by angels and a spiritual “guide,” evoke questions regarding the outer parameters of science and the known world. There’s a Window to Heaven was also welcomed with critical acclaim, receiving reviewer’s choice accolades from the Midwest Book Review in August of 2018.
American Shoes, Garrett’s full-length book (available February 15, 2022 by Beyond Words Publishing), is a fact-based story that recounts his mother Rosemarie Lengsfeld’s brave and harrowing upbringing as an American girl trapped inside Nazi Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler and the entirety of World War II. Told in flashbacks aboard a President Truman–mandated rescue ship that brought her back to America alone in 1946, American Shoes details the rapid breakdown of a society and the carnage of war and genocide from a child’s point of view. Written from a creative nonfiction perspective that blends firsthand, real-life memories with elements of well-researched historical fiction, American Shoes tells the ultimately triumphant story of one family’s struggle to survive against a barrage of Nazi lies and hate-mongering as a nearly apocalyptic world war advances closer and closer, until it is finally upon them.
Garrett attributes his passion for fairness and championing the underdog to his physician father, and his longing to see the world as a colorful, compassionate place to his artist-educator mother. Despite the many diverse aspirations and occupations he has pursued, he is now realizing what he believes to be his life calling—his childhood dream to be an accomplished author.
Garrett has helped raise two beautiful and talented daughters, whose life journeys as adults are just beginning. He and his “soulmate” and life partner Lindsay live in a quiet Japanese-style home they renovated in Michigan, a state he has come to love, with their ever-present Sheprador Retriever Blanca and three rescue cats. Still a “Cali boy” at heart, he enjoys traveling, swimming, bodyboard surfing, Mediterranean and Asian cooking, and natural light photography, not to mention old movies and countless reruns of Frasier and The Office. An avid audiophile, Garrett loves world music, a natural and complimentary extension of his travels and life adventures. The family continues to go on “adventures” as their time allows, often mixing writing with exploring new and unfamiliar places.
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