Her first book Forty Autumns A Family’s Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall (HarperCollins William Morrow, 2016, ISBN 0062410318) is the true story of Willner's mother's escape from communist East Germany at age 20, the large family she left behind the Iron Curtain, and their four-decade journey to reunite.

During the Cold War, Willner, a U.S. Army intelligence officer, led classified missions in Soviet-controlled East Berlin.

Willner's next book The Boys in the Light: An Extraordinary WWII Story of Survival, Faith and Brotherhood will be published in July 2025 by Penguin Random House (Dutton), and is a narrative nonfiction about the true story of her father, Eddie Willner's journey through the Holocaust as a boy and being rescued and adopted by the a company of young American tankers of the 3rd Armored Division.

Her father Eddie Willner, a Jewish Auschwitz and Buchenwald survivor, emigrated to the U.S. after WWII and served a career in the U.S. Army.

She has spent three decades living and working for the U.S Government, for non-profits and humanitarian outreach programs in Russia, Belarus, Czech Republic, Germany, Canada and in Turkey.