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About the Author
Tony Garel-Frantzen began writing biographies in 2015 following a successful career as an award-winning newspaper reporter and editorial cartoonist, public relations consultant, and senior corporate communications executive for a number of Fortune 500 companies. As an author, Tony has a passion for discovering and honoring ordinary people who use their particular gifts to live
As an author, Tony has a passion for discovering and honoring ordinary people who use their unique gifts to live remarkable lives.
Tony was born and raised in Chicago and graduated from DePaul University magna cum laude with a degree in Psychology. He holds a Certificate in The Second World War from Hillsdale College in Michigan. Tony and his wife live in southwestern Florida and have three grown children and two grandchildren.
Nightmare in Nanking (Hellgate Press-2023) is Tony’s first work of historical fiction.
Previous biographies include: Full Measure of Devotion—The Stirring Story of Illinois Native Philip Leckrone—One of the Few American Eagle Pilots to Fight in the Battle of Britain (Hellgate Press-2020); Hoosier Aviator Paul Baer: America’s First Air Combat Ace (The History Press-2017), and; Slow Ball Cartoonist: The Extraordinary Life of Indiana Native and Pulitzer Prize Winner John T. McCutcheon of the Chicago Tribune (Purdue University Press-2016).
About Tony Garel-Frantzen's Books
"Nightmare in Nanking" (Hellgate Press 2023)
An American missionary and a Nazi businessman form an unlikely alliance when an invading army turns their lives in China into a life-or-death struggle.
Nightmare in Nanking (Hellgate Press 2023) follows the lives of Illinois native Minnie Vautrin and German John Rabe whose paths cross under unexpected circumstances in China in 1937. Vautrin, born in 1886 to a blacksmith and his wife in a tiny Illinois town on the prairie frontier, set out to shatter all Victorian conventions that shackled women of her era. After graduating college at the dawn of the 20th century, she left America seeking a spirited life serving impoverished and uneducated women and girls in China.
By 1937, bookish-looking John Rabe from Hamburg was head of Siemens Corporation’s Nanking office. A staunch supporter of the genocidal Adolph Hitler and his rise to power, Rabe ironically tries and fails to leverage der Fuhrer’s authority to shield Nanking’s civilians when the Japanese army invades China.
Armed only with courage and an intractable moral will, Vautrin and Rabe are propelled into countless cliffhanger encounters with a barbaric army intent on beating and raping Nanking’s females and their daughters.
Set against the exotic vista of 1930's China on the eve of World War II, Nightmare in Nanking offers a timeless story of bravery in the face of evil and the indelible mark it leaves on the souls of two extraordinary humans.
"Full Measure of Devotion: The Stirring Story of Illinois Native Philip Leckrone—One of the Few American 'Eagle' Pilots to Fight in the Battle of Britain" (Hellgate Press)
As England braced for a life-or-death struggle against Germany in the summer of 1940, most Americans knew more about baseball than the bombs about to fall on London.
Not Phil Leckrone. The tall, handsome and gregarious pilot from a small town in downstate Illinois had a taste for fast cars—and faster airplanes. More than a year before Pearl Harbor brought America into World War II, Leckrone left his wife and two small children risking loss of citizenship, jail time, and hefty fines to sneak across the Canadian border and join the Royal Air Force.
Now, for the first time, his story has been brought to life.
Full Measure of Devotion is a scholarly yet vivid portrait that follows Leckrone from his birth in a rural Illinois community to his tragic death in a flying accident near London after the Battle of Britain concluded.
Leckrone was the first American to qualify as a Spitfire pilot in the R.A.F., and one of only seven American RAF pilots to fight in the Battle of Britain. His courage and daring earned him a number of combat kills, for which he was awarded the rare Battle of Britain medal. Leckrone left an indelible mark on his fellow British pilots, his family, and friends back home.
During the research for this biography, Tony had the incredibly good fortune of locating Leckrone’s 82-year-old son, Richard, who agreed to write the foreword and contribute private materials for use in the book.
“Hoosier Aviator Paul Baer: America’s First Combat Ace” (The History Press)
Indiana native Paul Baer grew up short and shy in a modest midwestern family but he was not short on ambition. In Tony's second biography, readers can celebrate the 100th anniversary of America’s first-ever combat pilot to earn the title of “ace” for shooting down five enemy aircraft during the War to End All Wars.
Hoosier Aviator chronicles Lt. Paul Baer’s aerial heroics in the skies over France during World War I. The biography features rarely seen images, a previously unpublished POW letter from Baer himself and a look at the restless raptor's life of roaming after the war. Born into a modest midwestern family in the late 1800s, Baer volunteered to join a new breed of combatant: the fighter pilot. Dogfighting in the skies over France during World War I, Baer earned a giant reputation as the first-ever American to shoot down an enemy plane, the first to be named “ace,” and the first to earn the new Distinguished Service Cross (among many other decorations) -- before being shot down himself.
"Slow Ball Cartoonist: The Extraordinary Life of Indiana Native & Pulitzer Prize Winner John T. McCutcheon of the Chicago Tribune" (Purdue University Press)
Slow Ball Cartoonist takes readers on a journey to an earlier era when daily newspaper cartoonists influenced the lives of their readers -- none more so than John T. McCutcheon, the Dean of American Cartoonists, combat artist, war correspondent and world traveler. Slow Ball Cartoonist is an Official Legacy Project of the Indiana Bicentennial Commission and available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Purdue University Press. Tony is a military aviation enthusiast and soloed his first plane, a 1946 Piper Cub J-3, in 2003. He and his wife raised three children and continue to live in the Chicago area.
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