Check out the latest book by Jennifer Harris! Those of you who love Psychological and Historical Fiction need to add this to your  “to be read” stack on your nightstand. Keep your eyes open for my review. I promise you that I have left room in my schedule for this promising read!

SYNOPSIS:

‘A literary treasure of masterful storytelling.’ – Midwest Book Review

2015. Stella, a professor and historian, comes to the beautiful and ancient city of Bonn, Germany, for a World Heritage conference. With things at home tearing at the seams, she is determined to pretend all is well. After she is assaulted over a trivial matter by another delegate, Stella descends into a shadowy observer, slowly becoming an obsessed stalker. When she meets the elderly Hildegard on a park bench by the River Rhine she is drawn into her wartime story, little seeing the similarities to her own situation.

1941. Hildegard, new wife to Kurt and student of architecture, surrenders to the inevitable; she needs a job for them to pay their rent. Interviewing for a hotel post, she does not realize her life now is off course, running on a track destined to collide with the sinister Fuhrer himself. She is thrust into the role of maid to Hitler and is no longer able to hide away from reality in her studies. Moving forward is the only option, no matter how dark it gets.

With the story switching between 2015 and 1941, Stella and Hildegard face questions of survival, identity, love and meaning as they juggle moral ambiguities in a world of elusive justice.

Jennifer Harris writes literary fiction inspired by the historic environment—not historical fiction, but fiction set in the contemporary era that responds to the past, remembered either publicly in monuments and memorials, or in subtle, private ways. Her PhD is in Cultural Heritage theory and she has lectured in and researched cultural heritage and museums for many years. She has also run a small museum, and worked as a journalist in Australia and London. 

Jennifer is from Western Australia and has lived also in France and the UK. In 2020 she relocated to Seattle in the spectacular Pacific Northwest of the USA.