Lizzie’s story focuses on her love for her brother, Henry, who suffers from depression and eventually PTSD after serving in Germany during the War. Lizzie and Henry hate that the German scientists who were members of the Nazi party are allowed to work freely in the United States. While Sofie is trying to rebuild a life in America, Lizzie is determined to make it difficult for her. Lizzie’s mentally unstable brother adds even more tension to the situation since he believes Jurgen is out to get him. The story also involves Lizzie, an American, and her scientist husband. I especially enjoyed her parts of the story, and what I learned about the Dust Bowl. I also appreciated the complexities explored in the dynamics of the local community where both veterans of the war and these scientists were living side-by-side. Sofie tried to explain what they really went through and that they didn’t agree but had to. Lizzie and others didn’t want to hear it.

My last two novels are set in 20th century. 'The Photograph' tells the story of Hungarian refugee Rachael who escapes to London from Budapest in 1956. Travelling to Sardinia with her archaeologist father, she meets the man who will change her life. Meanwhile in 2018, her anthropologist grand-daughter Sophie is struggling with infertility. As their two stories intertwine, Sophie uncovers her grandmother's secret. s - Lizzie and her brother Henry leave Texas when their farm goes bust and their parents die. After years of drifting Lizzie marries a nice man even though she does not love him. Henry appears to have bi-polar which would not have had a name at the time but he is able to join the army and is shipped overseas. He is obviously increasingly erratic when he comes home from the war. It is 1950s Alabama and now Sofie and her two children have joined Jürgen, as he was one of well over 1000 German scientists, engineers, and other top specialties, who were pardoned and brought to the US for the space program, and it was called Operation Paperclip. Lizzie Miller’s husband Calvin was the manager at the space program and Jürgen was one of his employees. As one of the American wives who now has to live among German wives, we start to see things from her point of view. You will feel all the emotions each character is feeling in both time periods through Ms. Rimmer’s marvelous writing style and learn the difficult times for those who lived in Germany and resisted or spoke out and learn about the Americans who lived here during the depression and through the dust bowl. Potentially offensive content includes violence in the context of war, sex (though not graphic), and child endangerment.What kind of a person should try to undermine a family’s new life without even trying to understand their old one?’ if you’re new to historical fiction, or enjoy WW2 HF without the really heaviness of the concentration camps and war content, this will be a good one for you. it focused much more on the aftermath of the war as well as the years leading up to WW2 and how Hitler slowly took over Germany. i appreciated that history… it seemed so fast but it was YEARS of subtle changes and slowly coming to power that ultimately when people realized what the Nazi’s were doing, it was really difficult to stop it. When it came to Lizzie and her brother Henry, they grew up in Texas and suffered greatly due to the Dust Bowl and the depression. Now in 1950s Alabama they are neighbors to Jürgen and Sofie. They hear the grumbling that goes on that Jürgen was possibly part of the Nazi regime. But hopefully they’ll lead separate lives and she will do her best to fight any prejudice where she might be naturally inclined. Her worries are for her brother Henry, as he is suffering from his time in the war, to the point that she learns that it might be combat fatigue and this is flavoring a lot of his actions. This in some ways affects how she views anyone that is in America that has come from Germany.

Not many books in this genre allow readers to see life at this time through the eyes of the Nazis. So many focus on the prisoners and their plight. In this novel, we see life through the eyes of a wealthy Nazi family. Rix brings readers to the spot where they see the need to examine their own lives before they point a finger at what those around them are doing. She hopes we may find that we are capable of the same things we are blindly criticizing others for doing. The German Wife by Kelly Rimmer was heart wrenching and uplifting at the same time. It was one of the best historical fiction novels I have read so far this year. The characters were vividly portrayed and so real that they found a way to creep into my heart and under my skin. Kelly Rimmer’s research on this book was extensive and thorough. It was so well written that the plot drew me in right from the beginning and held my attention until the very satisfying and well done ending. There were three distinct settings…Nazi Germany in the 1930’s, a small farm in Oakden, Oklahoma during The Great Depression and the devastating dust storms and in Huntsville, Alabama in the 1950’s. The story was told through alternating points of view from the two women protagonists and switched between the latter time periods and the present one in 1950. I have read several of Kelly Rimmer’s books and after reading each one I wonder how she will write one that is better the the last. Somehow she always manages to do it.The social and political sacrifices…told through her cast …allowed for important compelling questions to be examined. We see a character torn between what he does and his conscience – to speak out? Or remain safe and keep quiet? Living in Munich under Nazi control was a dangerous place.

Dieter Martiny; Dieter Schwab (October 2002). "Grounds for Divorce and Maintenance Between Former Spouses" (PDF). ceflonline.net. Eventually, Jurgen faces an unenviable dilemma “I’m trapped on this path where my work is building to something heinous.” Their family under threat, they conclude: “The cost of anything but perfect compliance would simply be too high.”Kelly Rimmer has this way of immediately enveloping you in a story, making you feel like you are right in Huntsville living alongside Sofie. I thoroughly enjoy the intimacy and emotional intelligence of her stories, and I am already eager for what’s next. Highly recommended for all hist fic fans.

finished this on audio and leaving off a rating due to the subject matter. while it’s based on a true story, at the end of the day it is fiction and i can 100% understand any criticism this book receives. i found the ending to be quite distasteful and almost dangerous in its meaning (keeping this spoiler free though!). Whilst still at heart, a love story, this book had the power to evoke so many feelings, that I’m sure I won’t have felt the same way about it as the last reader, nor the next. It really is a journey you need to make for yourself and see where it leads you!This is one woman's journey from a happily married woman to a marriage of fear and distrust. The hidden horror of Dachau that are exposed and the far reaching effects of the cruelty of the Nazi party. Those that serve because they believe in the Reich and those that serve out of fear. Summary: Adultery in Germany - impowr.org". www.impowr.org. Archived from the original on 14 October 2017 . Retrieved 17 April 2018. These two families end up neighbors in Huntsville, Alabama where the Rhodes have been settled thanks to the US Operation Paperclip whereby the US arranged to get the best of German scientists out of Germany, regardless of their affiliation with the Nazis and put them to work in the US space program.