When Joe Hurka traveled to the Czech Republic eight years ago, his intent was to gather material for a National Geographic article on Prague. What he found instead in the capital city of the Czech Republic was the heart, soul, and secret of his father's early life - a time when Hurka senior served as an Underground fighter in the anti-Communist movement.
"I was in the airport going over my notes, thinking 'oh boy, there goes National Geographic,' because it was getting too personal," Hurka remembers.
And so Hurka, a Tufts lecturer, turned his discovery into a seven-year-long research project, which culminated in the writing of his first book - Fields of Light: A Son Remembers His Heroic Father.
Hurka will share part of this story tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. in the East Hall Lounge, where he will read excerpts from the biographical work that has already won the Pushcart's 19th Annual Editor's Book Award. Fields of Light will be published and available for purchase in mid-April.
"The best way to describe it is as a memoir where I'm discovering my father's resistance and spy work. I didn't know about it.... I went over there not knowing about what he had done."
For Hurka, this meant delving into his father's past, a past that his father had worked hard to conceal for much of his life. As a spy, Hurka's father covered up much of his political dealings - to talk out loud would have meant danger for himself and his relatives. His father had essentially buried his history, and Hurka had to dig deep to recover it. "The Communists erased my father from history... this is me really putting him back," he said.
The discovery and writing process took Hurka on a journey through the faces and places of Prague and the United States, talking to people involved in both the Communist struggle and its obliteration during the Velvet Revolution. He then ventured to Tufts' libraries to pore over books on Bohemian and Communist history.
But his father was his most important source and became Fields of Light's focus. Now that Communism has ended, his father had the freedom to share stories of his spy work, his imprisonment, and his eventual release.
"He helped me a great deal, took me through the details. I was writing about the prison experience and I checked to see if it was accurate. He looked at it and said, 'let's really give the whole story'," Hurka said.
Not only is Fields of Light Hurka's opportunity to pay tribute to his heroic father, it is also a chance to play a different role at Tufts. Hurka, who is in his 13th year as a Creative Writing lecturer for the English department, now has the title of published author attached to his name.
There is a bit of Tufts in the book as well - his students, although ever-changing, were with him throughout the process of learning and self-discovery.
"The students were my inspiration throughout the whole thing. That kept me sane," he said. "It's good to have intelligent faces to come to and talk to."
