Women in the Castle

<p><strong>INSTANT <em>NEW YORK TIMES</em> BESTSELLER</strong></p><p><strong>GoodReads Choice Awards Semifinalist </strong></p><p><strong>Moving . . . a plot that surprises and devastates.--<em>New York Times Book Review</em></strong></p><p><strong>A masterful epic.--<em>People magazine</em></strong></p><p><strong>Mesmerizing . . . <em>The Women in the Castle</em> stands tall among the literature that reveals new truths about one of history's most tragic eras.--<em>USA Today</em></strong></p><p><em>Three women haunted by the past and the secrets they hold</em></p><p>Set at the end of World War II in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined--an affecting shocking and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the <em>New York Times</em> Notable Book <em>The Hazards of Good Breeding.</em></p><p> Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany's defeat Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband's ancestors an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband's brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives her fellow resistance widows.</p><p>First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin the son of her dearest childhood friend from a Nazi reeducation home. Together they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin where Martin's mother the beautiful and naive Benita has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania another resister's wife and her two boys now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war. </p><p>As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband's resistance movement she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before during and after the war--each with their own unique share of challenges. </p><p>Written with the devastating emotional power of <em>The Nightingale Sarah's Key</em> and <em>The Light Between Oceans</em> Jessica Shattuck's evocative and utterly enthralling novel offers a fresh perspective on one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Combining piercing social insight and vivid historical atmosphere <em>The Women in the Castle</em> is a dramatic yet nuanced portrait of war and its repercussions that explores what it means to survive love and ultimately to forgive in the wake of unimaginable hardship. </p>