THE SECOND WINTER

It is 1941, and the remorseless chill of a Danish winter exposes both the collateral cruelties of World War II and the flaws and virtues in human nature that allow them to propagate. Nazis and Danish resistance fighters lay waste to human lives with equal indifference, and Jewish refugees survive only through the questionable charity of mercenaries. When a dazzling sapphire necklace brightens this bleak landscape, the terrible consequences of its theft start a ripple effect that will take decades and the fall of the Berlin Wall to come to fruition.

Fredrik, a massive, brutish farmhand banished by a privileged family to live on a remote farm, finds himself losing control as he seeks to protect his children in a lawless world. His children struggle to thrive in the face of their father's agony; the loyal Amalia overworks herself to feed the habits of the father she adores, while Oskar must find the courage to step out from Fredrik's looming shadow. When Oskar encounters Polina, a seductive, troubled half-Jewish girl kept as a prostitute by the Germans, the family must fight to find a moral structure for their lives and to realize their own truths in the midst of crisis.

A cinematic and intricately plotted thriller of intertwining fates, The Second Winter illuminates the logic of how bystanders become collaborators under the influence of Nazism, offering readers an insuppressible gleam of hope amid the horrors of wartime life.

CRAIG LARSEN was born in 1968 and is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Columbia Law School. His first novel, Mania, was published in 2009. A single father, Larsen has lived in New York and Europe. He currently resides in Northern California.