Löwengold

by Steve Rogan

Suffering critical injuries after a hit-and-run incident in suburban Dandenong, eighteen-year-old Arron Keller is placed into an induced coma. His brain activity is abnormally erratic, and his doctor fears that he might not recover to his former self. After seven weeks, Arron emerges from the coma, entering then into a trance-like state, and begins speaking to his mother in German.

Her son’s doctor seeks the assistance of German-speaking Radiologist, Doctor Bronwyn Fischer, bringing her immediately to Arron’s room to ask him questions. He reveals details of an ex-German soldier’s last night of life in Giessen in 1946.

Being told that neither of Lillian’s sons have ever learned the German language, Dr. Fischer surmises the bed-side exchange to be nothing more than Arron’s mind tapping into his subconscious, replaying a jumbled set of memories born of his love of old World War II movies. Arron becomes an instant celebrity after the posting of the video Lillian recorded of the exchange with Dr Fischer to her lifestyle blog and her two social media accounts goes viral, and a Melbourne Morning Show interviews Arron and Lillian in his hospital room, thus increasing the exposure of the video around the world.

In addition to a plethora of teenage girls flooding Arron’s Instagram, his celebrity status, and the reasons for it, catches the attention of various people whose respective interest in the video’s content runs far deeper than mere curiosity, marking Arron as a vital key to the recovery of a rare artefact, rumoured to predate the Younger Dryas Stadial, twice stolen during World War II and lost for many decades since.

302 pages, Paperback

Published February 14, 2022

About the author

Writing came to me in 1975 like a lost dog emerging from a storm. I knew it, and it knew me, though we had never met before; that dog has been at my side ever since.
I have no idea as to from where the muse comes, and I’ve never sought to question it.
I write whatever comes – only if I believe I’m connected to the idea – and I’m happy to go about this work without the restrictiveness of feeling bound to any one genre.
I went to the University of Sydney and, after the professor took delivery of the bottle of wine that had been sent to him as a Christmas gift, I was then required to leave campus and go about my courier work once more.