First published 2021
Millie Mosbach stands in the rubble of postwar Berlin, searching for any trace of the parents and sister she left behind when she fled to America before Kristallnacht. She works alongside her brother David in the Allied occupation, rooting Nazi sympathizers out of the publishing industry. The city has become a lawless frontier where black markets flourish and desperate survivors prey on each other. Millie carries rage toward Germany and guilt over her escape, but her boss Major Harry Sutton shows unexpected sympathy for their former enemies. As spies move through the shadows and forbidden relationships bloom between occupiers and occupied, Millie must confront a choice she made during her escape years ago. The mysterious major seems to understand her inner turmoil in ways that both comfort and unsettle her. In this dangerous landscape of bombed buildings and broken lives, Millie faces the possibility that survival sometimes requires forgiving both others and yourself.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Berlin, America
Period: Postwar
352 pages · Paperback · Simon & Schuster UK
Content warnings: violence, war