Part One
The War
Vienna, 1945. A teenage draft, a friendship, and an escape that reads like fiction. It isn't.
A true story.
Talking
About Bruno
A seventeen-year-old survives a war he never wanted. Decades later he becomes the great love of a woman brave enough to leave everything for him. Every word of it happened.
One life, three parts.
The book moves in chronological order — a structure this story earned rather than one imposed on it.
Part Two
The Love
A married woman meets a twice- divorced professor twenty-four years her senior — and decides the risk is worth it.
Part Three
The Legacy
Fourteen years, one long illness, and the cardinals that still visit her window.
I didn't write this to make it look better than it was. I wrote it because thirty years later, I'd still make the same choice.
— Penny Schilling, author of Talking About Bruno
Debut author. Not exactly
a debut life.
Before Talking About Bruno, Penny Schilling worked as an activity director, a singer, and a guitar teacher — this is the book she spent nearly forty years living before she wrote a word of it.
Her family calls her "Miss Chatty Pants Mom." Bruno called her "the Bubble Machine." Both show up on every page.
More about PennyFor press, reviewers, and film/TV inquiries
A true story with the shape of an adaptation. Media kit, review copies, and development inquiries welcome.
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No spam — just a note the day Talking About Bruno launches, and the occasional look behind the scenes before then.