An absolutely heartbreaking tale of love and survival in wartime Germany
Germany, 1912. Greta Zolner has never been loved — not the way a daughter deserves to be loved.
She gets up before dawn. She scrubs until her hands bleed. She watches her beautiful little sister receive everything while she receives nothing. When she falls in love with Hermann, a gentle man at the village market, her father beats her for it.
Her only friend is Ruth, a young Jewish girl from the local library who shares her love of books. In Ruth’s warm, loving home, beneath the gentle care of her bubbie, Greta finds something she thought she’d lost forever—a place to belong.
Then a wealthy family from Berlin arrive at their small village. They need a wife for their son. A simple girl. Innocent. Someone who won't ask questions. Greta is sent away — delivered to a cold house, a faithless husband, and a world of secrets she knows nothing about.
She has no idea that a woman is watching from the shadows. A woman whose life her husband has destroyed.
A woman with nothing left to lose.
Only Ella, the old cook, takes Greta's hand and whispers what she has seen.
You are not here by accident. Someday, Greta—you will save lives the world cannot afford to lose.
A heartbreaking story of survival, sacrifice, and the courage of one ordinary woman on the eve of history's darkest chapter.
Book 1 in Roberta Kagan's Duty and Betrayal series.
