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Time Travel
Trusting the Smugglers’ Route
Two women, separated by eight decades of history, summon their bravery before a perilous cliff on a WWII smugglers’ route at the French-Swiss border.
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About the Journalist
Mike Bernhardt is an award-winning writer whose stories have been published in print and online by Hidden Compass, Diver Magazine, GeoEx Travel, Deep Travel, Journey Beyond Travel, and others. His 2023 story for Hidden Compass, “The Tides of War,” won a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.
In 2021, Mike published “Voices of the Grieving Heart,” a book of 160 poems and short essays written and contributed by 83 people whose loved ones died. His poetry also appeared in the book “Finding What You Didn’t Lose,” by John Fox.
He is writing a novel based on the true stories of his wife’s family during WWII, non-fiction versions of which appear in “The Tides of War” and in “Trusting the Smugglers’ Route,” which appears in Hidden Compass’s Spring 2026 issue.
Mike has also begun researching his own mother’s life during the war, and his grandfather’s exploits as a member of the French Resistance.
He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and best friend, Yvonne.
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