Monthly Archives: April 2020

Today is publication day for In Our Midst!  Alas, none of us can be in public spaces right now for anything like a reading, a Q&A, and a launch party–but I have a computer, a headset and a serviceable built-in voice recorder, so I have created a short reading you might enjoy.

What you’ll hear are the last two pages of the first chapter of In Our Midst.  The scene is set in the Aust Family Restaurant, during a midday St. Nikolas Day celebration on December 7, 1941.  Click here to listen.

If you’d like to read the first chapter, click here.

Only a few days more! 

Drawing upon a long-suppressed episode in American history, when thousands of German immigrants were rounded up and interned following the attack on Pearl Harbor, In Our Midst tells the story of one family’s fight to cling to the ideals of freedom and opportunity that brought them to America.

Nina and Otto Aust, along with their teenage sons, feel the foundation of their American lives crumbling when, in the middle of the annual St. Nikolas Day celebration in the Aust Family Restaurant, their most loyal customers, one after another, turn their faces away and leave without a word. The next morning, two FBI agents seize Nina by order of the president, and the restaurant is ransacked in a search for evidence of German collusion.

Ripped from their sons and from each other, Nina and Otto are forced to weigh increasingly bitter choices to stay together and stay alive. Recalling a forgotten chapter in history, In Our Midst illuminates a nation gripped by suspicion, fear, and hatred strong enough to threaten all bonds of love―for friends, family, community, and country.

My thanks go out to Sarah Blakeley-Cartwright, Publishing Director for Chicago Review of Books, for inviting me to be one of their Instagram resident authors, which means I’ll be sharing glimpses of In Our Midst on their Instagram each day, April 21-28.  Watch for an introduction of me and In Our Midst on April 21, followed each day for the next week by photos related to places, people, and historical artifacts that inspired my story and its characters.

No need to wait until In Our Midst is released on April 28, 2020.  You can read the first chapter right now!  Click here.