The Road to Tarascon — M.K. Jacobs

‘What if you raised the lid of a piano stool in a bombed out house, and discovered a photograph of your mother with a German soldier… in NORMANDY? Vera Lawson has a core need to find her mother, who fled a violent marriage in Australia and faked her own death. Accepting an offer of employment with an aristocratic Wellmont family in London as a tutor, two boxes of letters are discovered by accident in one of her employer's attics. Vera now knows the family are hiding the connection between her mother Caroline Lawson and Gunther Polt, a Waffen SS Tank Commander, but needs to prove it. Polt arrogant and wealthy more concerned about the survival of his vineyards than his involvement in the Nazi regime, agrees to help Caroline steal two valuable canvases as retribution for her disinheritance. After the invasion, Vera is sent over with the Army of Occupation as Charge Nurse with a British Medical Unit, and recommends the family's Chateau in Saint-Pois for an evacuation hospital to her Surgeon Commander. Disaster strikes when a stray V2 rocket kills the entire Welmont household, Vera learns of her real relationship with the family. With the help of Timothy Ranstone the family's solicitor, Vera comes face to face with a captured German in a POW camp above Utah Beach. When skeletal remains are uncovered in the Chateau's crypt along with two stolen canvases, Interpol agrees to re-open the case to disclose Caroline Lawson's dark history.