Berlin, 1934. Sofie Rhodes is the aristocratic wife of a scientist whose post-WWI fortunes change for the better when her husband, Jurgen, is recruited for Hitler’s new rocket project. But too late they realise the Nazis’ plans to weaponise Jurgen’s technology as they begin to wage war against the rest of Europe.
Alabama, 1949. Jurgen is one of hundreds of Nazi scientists offered pardons and taken to the US to work for the CIA’s fledgling space program. Sofie, now a mother of four, misses Germany terribly and struggles to fit in among the other NASA wives.
When news about the Rhodes family’s affiliation with the Nazi party spreads, idle gossip turns to bitter rage, and the act of violence that results will tear apart a community and a family before the truth is finally revealed – but is it murder, revenge or justice?
Kelly Rimmer is a New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including The Things We Cannot Say, Truths I Never Told You and The Warsaw Orphan. BR readers love her, and for good reason. She consistently delivers heartfelt, powerful historical narratives that bring women’s stories to vivid life. The German Wife is no different.
In The German Wife, Rimmer explores a fascinating and often little-known part of post-WWII history: Operation Paperclip, a top-secret US intelligence program that saw German scientists taken from Nazi Germany to work for the US government. Many of these scientists were complicit in war crimes. Most of them went on to live comfortable lives in America, their records scrubbed. In The German Wife, Rimmer takes this controversial program and transforms it into a meticulously researched and compelling story about a community torn apart when a former Nazi family moves into town to work on NASA’s space program.
The novel follows two perspectives: Sofie and her family, both during and after the war, and Lizzie, the daughter of a farmer who grew up in America during the Great Depression. When both women find themselves in the same community in Alabama, tensions quickly rise. Rimmer effortlessly weaves together both perspectives to examine the devastating impact the war had on both women’s lives.
Heartbreaking, emotional and unputdownable, The German Wife is a thought-provoking novel about the lengths one will go to protect their family. A must-read for fans of historical fiction.
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