With Georg a hundred miles away and a husband confronting his own difficult feelings toward patriotic duty, Etta alone must gather the pieces of a splintering family, determined to hold them together in the face of an uncertain future. But soon after he arrives, it's clear that the boy who left is not the same returned. When Max is unexpectedly discharged, Etta is relieved to have her eldest home and safe. At home, news of the war provokes daily doses of fear as the planes grow closer, taking one city after the next. In Heidenfeld, Etta and her husband Josef roam an empty nest: their eldest son Max is fighting on the frontlines, while fifteen-year-old Georg has swapped books for guns at a Nurnberg school for the Hitler Youth. Germany, 1945, and the bombs are falling. The beauty of this book is that you are afforded a unique view of the war.'A heartbreaking portrait of an ordinary family shattered by a war they didn't want' The Times They've wrecked the world, these men, and still they're not done. This book pushes you to understand the loss for both sides of the conflict. War has terrible consequences and choices. You can’t read this book and not be affected. Their boys went away, every day they left and they didn’t come back or they came back broken and what use was victory then when everything was lost.”

“Victory was inevitable, they said, victory was a given, but the ladies knew better.

The effects of the war especially on the children were long lasting.

They were just trying their best during an impossible time. You will get to understand that some people supported Hitler while others just tolerated the situation. Each of them copes with the conflict in their own way. As they suffer you will get to feel their pain through the pages. Josef, Etta (the parents) and the kids, Max who is away fighting and Georg who is at Hitler Youth. The book is set in 1945 towards the end of the war and follows the Huber family. Binder used her great-grandfather’s journals and other research. This book was inspired by her family’s experiences. Annette Binder was born in Germany and grew up in Colorado, this is her first novel. This is a World War II novel but seen through a Germans viewpoint.

The vanishing sky