The Living and the Lost — Ellen Feldman

A gripping story of resilience, love, and forgiveness as a young German Jewish woman returns to post-WWII Berlin to confront her past and unexpected future.

"A deeply satisfying and truly adult novel." -- Margot Livesey, New York Times best-selling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

Millie (Meike) Mosbach and her brother David escape to America just before Kristallnacht, leaving their parents and little sister behind in Berlin. Millie attends Bryn Mawr on a special scholarship for non-Aryan German girls and finds work at a magazine in Philadelphia, while David enlists in the army and is posted to the top-secret Camp Ritchie in Maryland.

Now, they are both back in their former hometown, haunted by ghosts and hoping against hope to find their family. Millie works in an office rooting out dedicated Nazis from publishing, consumed with rage at her former country and its citizens. David helps displaced persons build new lives, while hiding his more radical nighttime activities from his sister. They both grapple with guilt at their own good fortune, except for Millie's boss, Major Harry Sutton, who seems too eager to be fair to the Germans.

In bombed-out Berlin, where drunken soldiers brawl, spies ply their trade, and unrepentant Nazis scheme to rise again, Millie must come to terms with a decision she made as a girl in a moment of crisis, and with the enigmatic Major Sutton who understands her demons. Atmospheric and page-turning, The Living and the Lost is a story of survival, forgiveness, and love in the aftermath of war.