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Captives
Frederick County, Maryland, September 1944. Florian Schneider, a code breaker for the German Army, is interned at POW Branch Camp 6. Many of his fellow inmates most of them seasoned Afrika Korps veterans mistrust the taciturn soldier, whose rank belies his education and his excellent command of the English language. He is assigned to work on the farm of Vivian Klein, whose daughter, Mary, has moved back home for the remainder of the war while her husband is fighting in the Pacific. An unlikely, complicated romance ensues between Mary and Schneider. Once Schneider earns the trust of his peers by saving the life of Bernd Wagner, he dares to propose to them the impossible a plan for escape: After a performance of Coriolanus by the German soldiers for their American captors on New Year's Eve, a group of German soldiers will steal a car and head for the New Jersey coast. Schneider knows that two spies enlisted to sabotage the Manhattan Project are scheduled to be delivered via submarine to the coast off Maine around New Years Day 1945. Schneider believes in the slight chance that he and his fellow escapees may be able to radio the sub to pick them up off the East Coast. On New Years Eve, everything starts out as planned, but shortly after midnight, as the men are stealing a truck on Vivian Klein's Farm, Mary surprises them. Unwilling to harm Mary or jeopardize the escape, Schneider tells the men to leave without him. Without Schneider's language skills, they are captured trying to cross the Susquehanna Bridge, and Wagner is killed. Blaming Schneider for the failed escape, the men convene a Court of Honor to decide his fate.
254 pages, Hardcover
Published October 31, 2019
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 28, 2023
An exciting read filled with spies, murder, escape plans, and a lot of finding oneself amidst the trials of World War II.
I wanted my first sentence to say the book is captivating, but I didn’t want the review to sound corny, because the book is so good! And captivating! Once you start really getting into the fray, you’re turning pages so fast and getting so much information from different perspectives, and all of it is so interesting you can’t wait to see what everything is thinking individually and how they’ll eventually decide each other’s fate. You’re not sure who might live or die from one page to the next, whose lies or secrets might be discovered, or who might finally open up to the right (or wrong) person. But amidst a raging war and being prisoners of war, these men are still trying to figure out the personal aspects of themselves, so the book has action and intrigue but also introspection and ultimate multiple love stories, while not being any sort of romance novel. These soldiers are doing desperate things to help their country get ahead in the war, but also desperate things just to feel human again.
Just really well written and the continually changing perspectives adds so much to how different people and types of people were viewing the war, while also giving such interesting background for each character, just barely touching on so many stunning things that were happening in World War II.
I wanted my first sentence to say the book is captivating, but I didn’t want the review to sound corny, because the book is so good! And captivating! Once you start really getting into the fray, you’re turning pages so fast and getting so much information from different perspectives, and all of it is so interesting you can’t wait to see what everything is thinking individually and how they’ll eventually decide each other’s fate. You’re not sure who might live or die from one page to the next, whose lies or secrets might be discovered, or who might finally open up to the right (or wrong) person. But amidst a raging war and being prisoners of war, these men are still trying to figure out the personal aspects of themselves, so the book has action and intrigue but also introspection and ultimate multiple love stories, while not being any sort of romance novel. These soldiers are doing desperate things to help their country get ahead in the war, but also desperate things just to feel human again.
Just really well written and the continually changing perspectives adds so much to how different people and types of people were viewing the war, while also giving such interesting background for each character, just barely touching on so many stunning things that were happening in World War II.
Displaying 1 of 1 review