The Morning after the Rain
Johanna loves her job. Working for the United Nations, she travels the world on humanitarian missions to bring desperately needed aid to the victims of war, persecution, and famine. But each time she returns to New York, yearning to be with her family, she feels like a stranger among them. Her husband Ralph and daughter Elsa believe Johanna cares more for people on the other side of the world than for her own family and have learned to manage their daily lives without her.
Decades later, Johanna inherits her Aunt Toni's house in Sankt Goar, a little town on the River Rhine in Germany where she and Elsa spent their summers growing up, and which has exerted a special pull on her ever since. Shortly after Johanna moves into her new home, Elsa, who has become a successful lawyer at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, unexpectedly turns up on her doorstep. Burned out from her job, Elsa decides to recover at Aunt Toni’s house, despite her frosty relationship with her mother. Gradually, Elsa realises that she has more in common with her mother than she thought. Until Johanna reveals a secret from the past that nearly destroyed both her and her family …
Buy the book:
Melanie Levensohn: The Morning after the Rain (German Edition)
Hc mit SU | 431 Pages | 24,00 € | ISBN: 978-3-3458644484
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A Jewish Girl in Paris
Paris, 1940: The City of Lights under German occupation. Christian, son of a bank director, falls in love with the Jewish girl Judith. The young couple secretly plan to flee, but suddenly Judith disappears. Christian begins a frantic search.
Montreal, 1982: Shortly before his death, Lica Grunberg confesses to his daughter, Jacobina, that she has an older half-sister, Judith. Lica escaped the Nazis but lost all contact with his first-born daughter. Jacobina must promise her father to find the sister she never knew. But the search languishes for 25 years, until Jacobina is spurred on by her much younger friend Béatrice, a French diplomat experiencing a painful midlife crisis. At the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., they meet Grégoire. Not only does he make Béatrice’s head turn, he also finds clues to Judith's whereabouts. Soon the two women discover a dark family secret, stretching over two continents and six decades. It will change their lives forever.
Paris, December 20, 1943
My Beloved,
We have been sitting in the basement since the early morning hours waiting for something to happen. The sirens are howling incessantly in the city above, but no bombs have fallen yet. Three days ago, you disappeared, and without you my life is devoid of light. My heart is silent with agony. I keep blaming myself. If only I hadn’t left you alone, so close before our escape. You are everything to me. EVERYTHING! In my despair I write to your father’s address that I found in your diary. I pray for you my love, and for a new world where there is a place for us and our love.
Forever yours,
C.
Béatrice read the letter again. Then she lowered the paper and stared at the wall. “Jacobina,” she whispered, “I think I found something.”