Return to Berlin

For fans of The Light After the War, a young woman haunted by a heartbreaking secret finds hope and forgiveness in a city shattered by war.

Young Meike Mosbach and her brother escape Berlin just before the horror of Kristallnacht, leaving their parents and little sister to follow them to America. But their family never arrives.

Haunted by their loss, Meike becomes Millie and graduates from college to work as a magazine journalist while David enlists in the army to work in intelligence. After the war, they both return to a shattered Berlin, hoping against hope to find their family.

Postwar Berlin is a wild west where drunken soldiers brawl, spies ply their trade and ‘werewolves’ – unrepentant Nazis – scheme to rise again. Consumed with rage at her former country, Millie’s job for the army rooting out Nazis from regaining a voice seems the perfect outlet. But her anger begins to thaw as she is faced with the daily reality of what the war has done to everyone, and the enigmatic Major Harry Sutton, who seems too eager to be fair to the Germans and far too perceptive about Millie.

In the rubble of postwar Berlin, Millie must come to terms with a devastating secret and find the courage to embrace love – and a new beginning.

About the Author

Ellen Feldman is the acclaimed author of Scottsboro, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Orange Prize,The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, which was translated into nine languages, Next to Love, Terrible Virtue, The Unwitting and Lucy . A former Guggenheim Fellow in fiction, she has a BA and MA in modern history from Bryn Mawr College and after graduate studies at Columbia University, she worked for a New York publishing house, like Charlotte in Paris Never Leaves You.

She has lectured around the US, Germany and the UK. She lives in New York and Amagansett with her husband and rescue terrier Charlie.