Escape on the Astral Express: A Novel: 1 (The Birken Saga) - Softcover

Bruckner, Harald Lutz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0578506599 ISBN 13: 9780578506593

Publisher: Hideaway Park Press, 2019

Synopsis

In the early 1930s, Helena and Alex Birken are forced into marriage by her father to salvage the family hotel in Düsseldorf, Germany. A year after the rise of Nazi leadership, their second son, Hektor, is born. Totally unprepared to run a business, the Birkens fail to save the property from bankruptcy during the overwhelming depression that is engulfing the country.Defeated but not conquered, Helena returns to her hometown of Essen in 1938 to open a meat market and grocery store. Even after Alex is conscripted into the military in 1939, she is determined to succeed. After a major bomb attack in March 1943, her sons Albert and Hektor are rushed off to safety on the Astral Express toward southern Germany. While they live with strangers in the tranquil village of Köndringen, Helena remains in the industrial city of Essen. Can Helena and her unborn child survive the relentless Allied aerial bombardments that leave her hometown in ashes? Will she escape imprisonment for defying the Brownshirts and Nazis and live to see their defeat? Will Alex return from the Russian front? Will Helena Birken reunite with Albert and Hektor as the Allied forces advance?Escape on the Astral Express is the first in a trilogy of novels revealing the tumultuous life of Hektor amid Nazism and its aftermath countered by the life-long inspiration he draws from his mother's persistence and strength.

About this title

About the Author

Harald Lutz Bruckner, author of The Blue Sapphire Amulet, hails from Germany but has spent his adult life in the United States. His work and educational adventures have taken him from the East Coast to the Midwest, West, and finally to the American Southwest. He's discovered that there is life after retirement from academia. Today, he enjoys painting and writing in sunny Arizona.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hideaway Park Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0578506599
• ISBN 13: 9780578506593
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 186