| Vendor | |
|---|---|
|
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
| Categories | |
MOTHERLAND
Based on a true story, this is a tense and haunting journey into the inner lives of ordinary Germans in 1945. Set in a fictional German spa town where elite Nazi officers take their vacations, it follows the Kappus family: Frank, a recently widowed doctor; Liesl, his young new wife; and Frank's three grieving boys, Hans, Anselm, and Jürgen, all under the age of nine.
Shifting perspectives between Liesl, Frank, and their sons, the novel bears unique witness to the shame and courage of Third Reich families during the devastating last days of the war. As Frank gets drafted to the Eastern Front, Liesl struggles alone to keep her stepsons alive and whole amid increasing air raids, wartime attrition, and the swelling population of desperate refugees. When six-year-old Anselm falls physically and mentally ill, and a doctor threatens to send him to a state asylum, each family member's fateful choices lead deeper into questions of complicity and innocence, and THE ASH FLOWER's unforgettable conclusion. This unflinching, intimate, and lyrical novel draws from the author's family history, and from letters between her German grandparents that were hidden in an attic wall for fifty years. Maria Hummel is an award-winning poet and essayist whose previous book, Wilderness Run, was hailed as "an utterly devourable historical novel" by the Los Angeles Times.
Maria Hummel is the author of the novel WILDERNESS RUN (St. Martin's, 2002), hailed as "an utterly devourable historical novel" by the Los Angeles Times and chosen as an alternate selection of the Doubleday Literary Guild. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Poetry, New England Review, Ploughshares, The Sun, and The Believer, and have won a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. She teaches at Stanford University, and lives in San Francisco with her husband and son.
| Available products |
|---|
|
Book
Published 2014-01-01 by Counterpoint |