This week, we're pleased to welcome author C.F. Yetmen with her latest novel, THE ROSES UNDERNEATH. Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the story. The author will offer a free copy of The Roses Underneath to a lucky blog visitor. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's post or Sunday's author interview for a chance to win. Here's the blurb.
August
1945, Wiesbaden, Germany. With the country in ruins, Anna Klein, displaced and
separated from her beloved husband, struggles to support herself and her
six-year-old daughter, Amalia. Her typing job at the Collecting Point for the
US Army’s Monuments Men is the only thing keeping her afloat.
Charged with securing Nazi-looted art and
rebuilding Germany’s monuments, the Americans are on the hunt for stolen
treasures. But after the horrors of the war, Anna wants only to hide from the
truth and rebuild a life with her family. When easy-going American Captain
Henry Cooper recruits her as his reluctant translator, the two of them stumble
on a mysterious stash of art in a villa outside of town. Cooper’s penchant for
breaking the rules capsizes Anna’s tenuous security and propels her into a
search for elusive truth and justice in a world where everyone is hiding
something.
Praise for The Roses Underneath
“A fascinating tale of survival,
intrigue, and Nazi looted art amid the ruins of 1945 Germany. It’s a world in
which very little is what it appears to be and everyone has a story they don’t
want to tell. The author exploits this place and time deliciously.”
James Kunetka, New York Times best
selling author
“Fans of Alan Furst will be
delighted with this debut novel from the perspective of WW II survivors as they
dig themselves out of the rubble and face deprivation and dislocation under
Allied command. Yetmen has created a fascinating and complex heroine torn
between ‘good Germans and bad Germans’ and the Americans who struggle to occupy
and heal a vanquished nation.”
Thomas Zigal, author of Many Rivers to Cross and The White League
“Yetmen turns the narrative of the
Allied forces’ Monuments Men 180 degrees and gives us a German protagonist: a
young woman who, with her daughter, has survived the war but now must figure
out how to survive its aftermath. Yetmen rejects heroism and absolutes in favor
of a more complex portrayal of postwar Germany and its American occupiers in
which good can look like evil, evil can look like good, and no one is
blameless. This page-turner from a talented new writer deserves a place on
every historical fiction-lover’s bedside table.”
Kathy Leonard
Czepiel, author of A Violet Season
**An Excerpt from The Roses Underneath**
Emerging on the
Adolfsallee, they turned left toward the Wiesbaden town center, Amalia taking
off in a half-skip, half-run. People were out and about, beginning daily tasks
of cleaning, clearing rubble, finding food, securing work or just walking the
streets in search of something. A line of women—pails in hand—had already
formed where the milk truck sometimes appeared. The Allied bombs had been
comparatively gentle on Wiesbaden, but that was just a relative notion. Bombs
were bombs. Anna watched Amalia jump over holes in the sidewalk, her green
dress bouncing in the dust clouds she kicked up. This is the
landscape of her childhood, Anna thought. Mountains
of rubble and rivers of blood. The girl was only six and had seen so
much misery and stomached horrible fear, and Anna worried that more was to
come. The war had been over for three months already, but what had replaced it?
What were they living in? A sort of provisional purgatory, she thought, with
occupiers who had to sort the bad from the good, the guilty from the innocent,
the past from the future. We are damned; we unleashed hell
on the world. And now we Germans must make good. She thought this every
day. But to make amends for monstrosities perpetrated in your name and with
your complicity, even if it was coerced? Was it even possible?
“Mama, look.” Amalia was
pointing at something on the ground and beckoning. As Anna approached, she saw
what had caught Amalia’s eye. Gleaming in the sunlight was a large metal
button, the kind found on a Loden jacket or a dirndl or some other traditional
dress, the kind the Nazis had been so fond of the German Volk
wearing. It was heart-shaped and stamped with a scroll pattern. “Can I take
it?” whispered Amalia, her eyes beaming as if she had found buried treasure.
Which, Anna thought, she had, in a way.
“Yes, you may,” said
Anna, joining in the spirit. “What a prize.”
Amalia picked up the
button, now black with grime and held it on her flat palm. “Can we wash it,
Mama? So it will shine?”
“Yes of course, little
Maus,” said Anna. “Now put it in your pocket and keep it safe. We need to
hurry.”
Amalia slipped her hand
into her mother’s and they walked on between the piles of stones that lay like
sleeping prehistoric creatures along the street. Anna imagined them
hibernating, waiting until they could be reanimated into something new,
something hopeful. As they approached the Rheinstrasse, the bustle of the city
flowed along the main thoroughfare and the Bonifazius church glowed in the
morning sun, Gothic spires flanking its bombed out sanctuary like two sentries.
The American MP directing traffic at the intersection whistled and motioned for
them to cross. They turned and walked east into the sun, joining the people
heading to whatever jobs they were lucky enough to have. Nearing the large,
looming Landesmuseum, where the Americans had set up shop, they walked along
the newly installed chain-link fence with the barbed wire on top until they
came to the guard at the workers’ entry outside the rear courtyard. The sign
read U.S. Army Monuments, Fine Art and Archives, and
the young soldier standing at the entrance looked as earnest and rigid as a
statue himself. Anna sat Amalia down on a bench next to the gate.
“Listen to me, Maus.”
Anna squatted down. “Do you remember what I said? You wait here until I come
out and get you. And what will you say if anyone asks you why you are here?”
Amalia exhaled and
flatly recited the words: “My name is Amalia Klein. My Mutter
ist Anna Klein. She ist in
there. I wait for her?” She pointed at the building.
“Mother, not Mutter,” said Anna, stroking the blond hair that threatened
to escape from Amalia’s braids. “Mother.”
“Mother,” said Amalia.
She pulled the button from her pocket and studied it with scientific intensity.
Anna’s
stomach clenched. She wished she had some choice other than leaving her
daughter here, on a bench on the sidewalk. But she didn’t. “Look, Maus.” She
pointed at the GI. “See that American? I bet he comes from Texas, from the Wild
West. Maybe he is the sheriff of his town and he has a big horse and he keeps
all the bad guys away. That’s probably why he’s standing guard here now. What
do you think?”
They stole a glance at
the bulldog of a GI. His face was young but worn and tired. His white MP helmet
was balanced precariously on his head, which seemed too large for his short,
square body. The name on his uniform said Long, which almost made Anna smile.
“So he’s going to need
your help keeping bad guys out of the museum while Mama goes to work.” Anna
turned Amalia to face the three-story building and pointed to the top floor.
“Count three windows from the end and that’s where I’ll be. I’ll be watching
you all the time while I am doing my job. Your job is to sit quietly here.”
“But how long will you
take, Mama?”
“Not long, only until
lunchtime. Do you promise you won’t move? You have Lulu to keep you company.”
A
pile of trash rained down from an upper window. GIs and German workers dodged
the periodic showers of debris, old blankets, mattresses, pieces of wood, and
building materials. These were the remnants of the hundreds of displaced people
who had sought shelter in the museum at the end of the war. Now it would house
the new offices of the Americans they called the Monuments Men. Anna was not
altogether sure what their job was, it seemed to have something to do with
returning items to people. But they had needed English speakers and typists and
to her great good fortune, she was adept at both.
C.F. Yetmen is a writer and consultant specializing in architecture and design.
She is co-author of The Owner’s Dilemma:
Driving Success and Innovation in the Design and Construction Industry and a former publisher of Texas Architect magazine. The Roses Underneath is her first novel. Visit www.cfyetmen.com.
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