One old man's memories. One young woman's tribute. One grave reminder for all. A serendipitous meeting between Heinz, a World War II veteran, and Rachael, a young waitress, leads to an unlikely intergenerational friendship-and the ultimate penning of this memoir-turned-novel. Each chapter based on a memory, Remembrance follows Heinz during his coming of age in Germany under the rise of Adolf Hitler. Even as he faces the trials and tribulations of youth-an authoritarian father, thwarted independence, the pangs of first love-the Nazis demand from him still more: to stand by while his Jewish best friend's rights are revoked, to bend to the regime's threats for conformity, and to surrender his body-and possibly his soul-as a conscript on the Eastern Front and a Russian prisoner of war. At once gripping and yet tender, Remembrance is a cautionary tale about the consequences of choices made, for they are our very becoming. As Goethe warned: "Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless." For readers of Kempowski's All for Nothing and Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, this fictionalized memoir provides a rarely told viewpoint of an ordinary German soldier, giving voice to a generation of war stories on the brink of being silenced forever.
