I absolultely, completely adore this book! Reader bliss.
Alexa and Ethan completely came alive for me. cornelia and richard also sparkled off the page. I believed it all and was 100% invested in the story.
So! Alexa is one of the main characters. She is the grown-up daughter of Cornelia. Intelligent. A good person who was raised by a somewhat cold and unaffectionate mother. The mother-daughter dynamic, and the aftermath of an emotionally withholding mother, were extremely well-written, nuanced, believable, perfect.
Ethan is the grown-up son of Richard, who gets to know Alexa. It is not instant love, or any romance-novel-bullcrap. Ethan is intelligent, but nowhere near the talent of his father. He has failures and difficulties in his past.
Cornelia (Conny) is the character we find out the most about. During the late 40s, she was the adult daughter of a mean alcoholic father, sweeping the floors at a hair salon for her work. She opens up to Richard, the American university student studying in Hamburg, and then never gets to marry him or spend her life with him. Richard shows her a world of books and literature, which becomes her lifelong passion, but much later, as a mother (and wife), she is mostly cold and unaffectionate.
Richard is the American student in Hamburg, who wants to marry Cornelia and bring her back to the US, but after the devastating flood / dam break, Cornelia is hospitalized in Hamburg, while Richard gets special treatment in an American military hospital, and gets immediately shipped back home to America. Conny can find no information about either Richard‘s death or his survival, until finally, she receives a letter back from Richard‘s family stating that he died (a lie) in the flood. Richard becomes a professor and a novelist, and comes back to hamburg late in life, and shows up at cornelia‘s book store.
Well, anyway! This was a huge five star book for me in all ways. Perfect and beautifully written.
The audible narration is excellent.
I truthfully have not enjoyed other books by this author. I hoped and prayed that the loewenhof books would come close to Sturmherz, but no. Not even in the same league for me.
Krähenweib, from this same author, is promising, but i have not yet read enough to know for sure.
And yet this book is absolutely wonderful, and i have listened to the audiobook twice now. Love love love this book.