On the Wings of Hope

By: Ella Zeiss, Helen MacCormac - translator

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

As World War II draws to a close, can two young people find love, hope - and freedom?

February 1942: Terrifying reports of the Wehrmacht’s advance across the Soviet Union spread like wildfire, striking new fear into the already oppressed German families living there.

Harri Pfeiffer, now sixteen, is summoned to the forced labour camp in Chelyabinsk. With men around him dying by the hundreds, every day is a fight for survival in a world plagued with despair.

Three years later, with the war finally over, Yvo Scholz arrives in Chelyabinsk, desperate for news of her brother, who was also last seen being dispatched to the labour camp. Still uncertain of the fate of her father, it takes all Yvo’s unshakeable courage to build a new life for herself while she waits for hope to return.

When their paths intersect, Harri and Yvo find a connection they never thought possible. But faced with hostility and discrimination, do they dare to dream they will one day be free - together?

©2019 by Ella Zeiss. Translation © 2019 by Helen MacCormac. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Strength, Love and Faith

On the wings of hope I started this book with 3.5 stars and didn't really expect to finish, I was doubting for a while if I should continue reading the book but I'm glad I did but it turned to be 4 stars at the end.

On the Wings of Hope has a feeling of sadness and desperation at all times, it is not a happy story and the happy moments are very rare maybe one or two and may at the end but the whole book is about the life of Yvo and Harri two souls working and living in the same situations during the war but didn't know each other.

Harri was leaving the worst nightmare of his life he was recruited or more like made to work constantly since he was only a boy, this really broke my heart, I mean I don't care what was happing at that time you don't treat humans like this and lest not start with how the people treat children in that era like they were nothing, they didn't have any right, they were forced to work like any other adult and many of them really missed their formative years and became adults for this idiotic war.

Yvo was living the same faith she had to start working when she was just a child, that way she wouldn't get separated from her mother, they both work so hard without any consideration, both had better luck a few months later and years when they got jobs that made them feel safer and had better food to survive..

On the Wings of Hope is a story that will bring you faith and that will keep you wanting that hope that happy ending for them, I feel like they suffered so much for years, and even when they finally were able to make a good life for them the country, the government kept treating them like an outcast, like they didn't have a country and they didn't belong.

This book really made me cry and scream a few times. I will never understand the way the Soviet Union was treating all these germans that didn't have anything to do with the war, it is terrible and very ignorant to think that you will solve anything by treating people the same way you country fought so hard to get rid off.. revenge is the worst thing you can use against your "enemy" but then again what can you expect from people who didn't have an ounce of empathy or education. their spirituality was on the floor or maybe they were not even humans.

The Narrations of Malcolm Hillgartner were great, he really brought the story and the characters to life

I'm glad Harri and Yvo had their HEA they really deserve it and so much more. they were great, they were strong and very kind I love how everything was settle and nothing was out of place.

Great story

The labor camp part kinda bums you out but keep with it because after that it gets good