Set in Nazi Germany’s only all-female concentration camp, Across the Lake is a story of survival amid overwhelming brutality. With a keen eye towards historical accuracy, this is an unflinching portrayal of how prisoners supported each other while holding onto their humanity. This is also a story of the female guards—the Aufseherin—who were every bit as vicious as the SS in Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz. What did it mean to be a woman in a concentration camp like Ravensbrück? Across the Lake is an unforgettable story about gender and violence in the Holocaust.
As Svea Fischer struggles to survive yet another day, she has to forget her past and endure the brutal reality swirling around her. Meanwhile, a new guard, Anna Hartmann, enters Ravensbrück and sees not horror, but opportunity. As the story unfolds, these two women find their futures inextricably tied together. Told with historical insight, Across the Lake explores a concentration camp that was totally unique in the Third Reich.
Spanning two very different decades—from the Nazi concentration camp of Dora-Mittelbau to the coast of central Florida on the eve of Apollo 11 lifting off—here is a story that explores the intersections between the terror of the Third Reich’s V-2 rocket program and the wonderment of landing on the moon.
Eli Hessel, a brilliant young Jewish mathematician, finds himself deep beneath a mountain where he is forced to build Nazi rockets in a concentration camp. When he is finally freed, he immigrates to New York, studies astrophysics, and is recruited by the Kennedy Space Center. As America turns to the moon and cheers for rockets that lance the sky, Eli is swallowed up by the past and must cope with brutal memories he thought were safely buried. In the Shadow of Dora is a chilling novel of real life events—it explores a largely unknown story of the Holocaust, the meaning of secrets, and how the past influences the present. If we clamp down images of horror, will they always ignite and rise up on us?
Soundtrack for In the Shadow of Dora
Benny Goodman: “Sing, Sing, Sing (with a Swing)”
Frédéric Chopin: “Andante Spianato, Opus 22”
Pyotr Tchaikovsky: “1812 Overture”
Mozart: “Serenade for Winds”
Glenn Miller: “In the Mood”
Billie Holiday: “Lover Man”
The Beatles: “Get Back”
Carl Orff: “O Fortuna ~ Carmina Burana”
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Told as a historical account in a documentary style, it explores the atmosphere of a death camp. It describes what it was like to watch the trains roll in, and it probes into the mind of its commandant, Hans-Peter Guth. How could he murder thousands of people each day and then go home to laugh with his children? This is not only an unflinching portrayal of the machinery of the gas chambers, it is also the story of how prisoners burned the camp to the ground and fled into the woods. It is a story of rebellion and survival. It is a story of life amid death.
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In the opening piece, “57 Gatwick,” which won the Glimmer Train Emerging Writer Fiction award, a terrorist bombing of a commercial airliner over the city of Duluth, Minnesota, gives the town coroner a new task beyond the collection and identification of victims’ bodies, thus restoring hope to a shattered community.
In “Burn Unit,” a lone, misanthropic woman who rescues stray and abused animals, in turn rescues her horribly burned niece from a neglectful family and a life of despair.In the “The Lazarus Bomb,” the crew of a B-17 bomber crew flying missions over Germany in WWII is suddenly imbued with the ability to give life rather than rain death. With gentle humor and deft, lyrical prose, this collection demonstrates that, despite these tragedies, unlooked-for miracles do occur.
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Adoptable – Thousands of childless couples in North America are increasingly turning to international adoption in order to become parents. While there are many wonderful things about trans-racial international adoption, it is—at its heart—a breaking away. To adopt a child from another country necessarily means taking them away from their culture, their language, and their ancestral background. As the child grows up, what affect does this have? What does it mean to look across a border and bring a young life towards you?
In this new collection, Patrick Hicks explores the thorny connections between home and away, blood and belonging, fatherhood and place, and he examines what it means to be a family. Full of humor, sensitivity, and startling honesty, these poems are about one man’s journey to understand his son.
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This London – Two thousand years ago a tiny village was founded on the marshy banks of the River Thames. Since then, this outpost of a crumbling Roman Empire has become an international city, a magnetic intersection between cultures and histories. London was once the capital for millions of colonized people around the globe, including-for nearly 200 years-a land that would eventually become the United States. For good or bad, our tongues move with words and ideas that bubbled up from this mighty city.
In this new collection, Patrick Hicks explores connections between history and place, colonialism and language, visiting and belonging, and he points out the hidden streets and personalities of a city that changed the world.
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