Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Historical adventure fiction

THE GOOD AT HEART

Ursula Werner

Based on the author's discoveries about her own great-grandfather, Good at Heart takes place over the three days in which World War II comes to the doorstep of a German family living in an idyllic, rural village near the Swiss border.

Edith and Oskar Eberhardt began building their dream home far from the increasingly unrestful Berlin. Soon after World War II breaks out, they; their daughter, Marina; son-in-law, Franz; and their grandchildren move to the small house in Blumental, near Switzerland. Oskar is gone most of the time, Franz is fighting in the war, and so the women of the house are left largely to their own devices in the town. When a captain set to guard the town from a possible French incursion ends up firing on its citizens and trying to hang their mayor, the war comes too close to the residents of Blumental. Luckily, General Erich Wolf, who was brought into the Eberhardt family circle when his own family died after World War I, helps restore order and turn the captain away.

But there is no true escape from the war’s atrocities. Marina; Johann, a minister in town; and some others are to deliver a “package” from Poland to Switzerland—the package being two girls who’ve lost the rest of their family. Everything is set to go smoothly until Oskar comes home bearing the news of a concert to take place in Blumental, a concert which the Fuhrer will be attending. Hitler will also be making a house call on the Eberhardts, made more complicated by the fact that the package from Poland is being stored in their cellar.

Ursula Werner is a writer and attorney currently living in Washington D.C. with her family. Born in Germany and raised in South Florida, she won a Rhodes scholarship while attending Duke University. After subsequently receiving her law degree from Yale, she spent the next decade practicing constitutional law, and has since expanded her practice to include litigation, administrative law, and family law.
Throughout her legal career, Ms. Werner continued her creative writing, publishing two books of poetry, In the Silence of the Woodruff (2006) and Rapunzel Revisited (2010). This is her first novel.

Available products
Book Published 2017-02-21 by Touchstone
Book Published 2017-02-21 by Touchstone

Comments

With The Good at Heart, Ursula Werner has written a book that lionizes the human experience. Hopeful and tragic,poignantand inspiring, it's a story made all the more compelling because it springs from the truth. A thrilling tale of ordinary people facing epic choices in a world gone mad.

Its title recalling the poignant diary entry Anne Frank left behind as her family was lead to the death camps, The Good at Heart is a brutal and beautiful story that answers ancient questions about what “good Germans” were thinking as their country descended into madness. Poet Ursula Werner packs her debut novel with jaw-clenching suspense and unexpected tenderness, and an ending that would break the heart of a stone.

In this delightfully written debut, the Eberhardt women, Edith and Marina, work tirelessly to protect their children from war in the bucolic German countryside. But nothing can protect them from the fact that they are Nazis. With Grandpa Oskar about to bring the Führer to visit, tension rises and there will be a price to pay for the denial, the guilt and the sometimes impossible choice between family and morality.

French: Mercure de France/Gallimard ; Spanish: Ediciones B

With skillful eloquence, Ursula Werner weaves a compelling tale of ordinary people living in extraordinarily complex and character-defining times. Poignant and moving, this World War II story paints a fresh perspective on what we are willing to surrender for the greater good.