VANISHING SKY

'They've wrecked the world, these men, and still they're not done. They'd take the sky if they could.' A heartbreakingly tortured history, we are brought into a world of pure yearning, determination, struggle and hope in this blazingly lucid depiction of Nazi Germany and how a fanatical political regime was encountered, accommodated, rejected and survived by ordinary people. Germany 1945 and the bombs are falling. In rural Heidenfeld, Etta awaits news from her sons - her eldest, Max is fighting on the frontlines, while 15 year old Georg is at school for the Hitler Youth. When Max is unexpectedly discharged, Etta knows something isn't right. With Georg a world away and a husband gripped by patriotic duty, Etta alone must gather the pieces of their splintering lives, determined to hold them together in the face of an uncertain future. The author was born in Germany herself and evokes great sympathy for Etta and her painfully fractured family while opening up unusual angles on the terrible conflict in her moving tale of a family destroyed by war which is inspired by her own family's history. 278pp, paperback.