Melanie Dobson, author of numerous historical and time-slip novels, again turns her considerable talent to blending the present and the past. Hannah Tillich, an archaeologist for the Third Reich, is forced to marry an SS officer, then forced to adopt the child he brings home. She comes to love the little girl as her own and would do anything to protect her. As Hannah begins to see behind the Nazi façade, she knows her days are likely numbered and that she must do something to preserve the lives of the Jewish people in Nuremberg.
Eighty years later, Ember Ellis is a Holocaust researcher eager to keep her troubling past a secret. She learns that the mother of a beloved teacher back in Martha’s Vineyard worked as a Nazi archeologist, but she has no desire to connect with her or the grandson who broke her heart. Yet the lure of the hunt for Jewish history propels her back to events she wants to forget.
Dobson does a fine job bringing two stories together and speaking into the evil of Nazi thinking that still exists—and some would say flourishes—yet today. She creates an artful weave of past and present, love and hate, salvation and death, forgiveness and second chances. (Tyndale)
About the Author
Ann Byle is author of Chicken Scratch: Lessons on Living Creatively from a Flock of Hens. She is a freelance writer and author of several other books, magazine articles, and reviews. She lives in Grand Rapids, Mich.