I am exciting to be hosting the blog tour for Two Fatherlands (A Reschen Valley Novel Part 4) by Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger #BookReview #HistoricalFiction #WW2 @ckalyna @maryanneyarde

 

  Two Fatherlands

 (A Reschen Valley Novel Part 4) 

By Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger 

 

It's a dangerous time to be a dissident...

 

1938. Northern Italy. Since saving Angelo Grimani's life 18 years earlier, Katharina is grappling with how their lives have since been entwined. Construction on the Reschen Lake reservoir begins and the Reschen Valley community is torn apart into two fronts - those who want to stay no matter what comes, and those who hold out hope that Hitler will bring Tyrol back into the fold.

 

Back in Bolzano, Angelo finds one fascist politician who may have the power to help Katharina and her community, but there is a group of corrupt players eager to have a piece of him. When they realise that Angelo and Katharina are joining forces, they turn to a strategy of conquering and dividing to weaken both the community and Angelo's efforts.

Meanwhile, the daughter Angelo shares with Katharina - Annamarie - has fled to Austria to pursue her acting career but the past she is running away from lands her directly into the arms of a new adversary: the Nazis. She goes as far as Berlin, and as far as Goebbels, to pursue her dreams, only to realise that Germany is darker than any place she's been before.

Angelo puts aside his prejudices and seeks alliances with old enemies; Katharina finds ingenious ways to preserve what is left of her community, and Annamarie wrests herself from the black forces of Nazism with plans to return home. But when Hitler and Mussolini present the Tyroleans with “The Option”, the residents are forced to choose between Italian and German nationhood with no guarantee that they will be able to stay in Tyrol at all!

 

Out of the ruins of war, will they be able to find their way back to one another and pick up the pieces?

 

I do enjoy reading books set in this era, and the blurb of this novel really intrigued me. A small community facing the threat of annihilation because of their countries need for electricity. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Tyrol, has Mussolini on one side and Hitler on the other. The future does not look too bright!

This story centres around a small group of characters who are connected in ways that some of them do not even understand. On the one hand, there is the lovely Katharina, who has a very unruly son and an equally determined daughter. There is Angelo, is he a bad guy, is he the good guy, who knows? But he is stuck in the middle of it all, trying to find a way to protect Katharina (because he had an affair with her many years ago and fathered a child with her). There there is
Annamarie, the said daughter, who is desperate to become an actress but somehow ends up being swept away by Nazie ideology. So, as you can see, there is a lot going on.

I thought this story was brilliant from start to finish. This is undoubtedly one of those books that once started, you have to finish, and I certainly became really invested in the characters. At times I groaned aloud at their choices, and wept for their community. The author certainly knows how to pen a compelling plot.

If you like to read a story from multiple perspectives and enjoy a novel that has been meticulously researched, then I think you will enjoy Two Fatherlands very much!

 

 

Universal Buy Link 

 

 

Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger is an American author living in Austria. Her focus is on historical fiction. She has been a managing editor for a magazine publishing house, has worked as an editor, and has won several awards for her travel narrative, flash fiction and short stories. She lives with her husband in a “Grizzly Adams” hut in the Alps, just as she’d always dreamt she would when she was a child.

 

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  Thank you to The Coffee Pot Book Club for giving me the opportunity to read this book.