CHOOSING SIDES

In this historical novel, two extended German families are torn apart by conflicting loyalties during the rise of Nazism.

Claus Diedrich “Diech” Wessel, the youngest of nine children, was born in Ahrensflucht, Germany, a small village by the North Sea. After digging trenches in the military during World War I, he decides to never again participate in another war. When he returns home, he finds work as a carpenter’s apprentice, which he gradually builds into a career. In the fall of 1922, Diech marries Marie Lucia “Mimi” Hornbostel, and the couple moves in with Mimi’s parents on her family’s farm in Westersode. Their son, Karl-Heinz “Heinzie” Wessel, is born in 1923, but the German economy is fragile, and there’s little opportunity for Diech to buy his own land. Mimi has family living in Absecon, New Jersey, and in 1927, the Wessels cross the Atlantic. Despite confronting some early anti-immigrant hostility, they begin creating their own American dream. Back in Germany, members of the extended Wessel family worry about the rise of Adolf Hitler, who becomes chancellor in 1933. Diech’s brother Fish writes to him: “Who are we but ordinary people caught up in a massive shift, like an earthquake….What can we do but ride out the storm and hope for the best?” From here, the novel—a fictionalized version of author Wessel’s own family history—becomes more ominous and relevant as readers watch the gradual indoctrination of the German populace; Heinzie’s cousin and best friend in Germany, for instance, proudly joins the Hitler Youth. After Mimi returns, in 1934, to her home country with Heinzie and his younger brother Louie to care for her recently widowed mother, readers will find it chilling to observe the fully Americanized Heinzie become a young Nazi. Although the historical details of book burnings and Kristallnacht, portrayed here, are well-known, the author’s strength is in his portrayal of ordinary Germans swept into the increasing horror—some actively, others passively—while others are stilled by fear.

Well-developed characters bring new life to a familiar and frightening story.