Out of Splinters and Ashes

By: Colleen L. Donnelly

Narrated by: April McIntire Barrow

Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

Cate is a runner. She prefers to help her fiancé run his New York senate race, but she finds herself running instead to fix what’s broken between her grandparents before he finds out - her grandmother has moved out of the family home, and her grandfather is accused of a pre-WWII relationship with a woman in Germany.

Dietrich is a German journalist with a spotless reputation. He prefers facts, but he finds himself lost in a world of fiction instead to prove his novelist grandmother couldn’t possibly have been the lover of a US runner in Berlin’s 1936 Olympics - especially when that runner’s granddaughter is Cate, a stubborn obstacle he should but can’t ignore.

Cate runs hard to cover up what Dietrich uncovers, until he shows her how it could have been - and how it could be again - that one can indeed love an enemy.

©2018 Colleen L. Donnelly (P)2018 Colleen L. Donnelly

Totally gripping!!

I loved the story! It was an excellent ! Even though it was fiction, it made me think how much the it could be true.

A Love Story of Sorts written with a poetic touch

I bought an ebook copy of this novel midway through, even though I had been gifted a copy of the audiobook from the author at my request. So off the top, it's evident that I found the story worthy of concentrated attention. That said, I think I'm being a touch generous with my overall rating of four stars. First the good: much of the writing is absolutely beautiful, and I often had the sense that the author is more a poet than a novelist, or perhaps even a visual artist--her sentences often read like they were painted or drawn rather than written. I meant to keep more notes, (difficult to do while listening), but sentences like: "His dark brows conferenced in the middle of his forehead" and "He devoured the three steps between them" were commonplace throughout the book. But while the imagery was often arresting, the actual unraveling of the story was choppy at best and often down-right frustrating. I found the use of the term "enemy," which was sprinkled throughout blurbs, plot summaries, and the book itself, unsettling. The plot starts in 1936, a time when the United States and Germany were not, in fact, at war, and for all intents and purposes had a friendly relationship. Yet the term enemy is used for what happened then, and it is evoked again in the early 21st century. Then there was the murky relationship between Cate's grandparents, which never is completely resolved, and a totally unrealistic portrayal of Cate's romantic relationship with her fiancé. There might be mouse-like females out there today who let the men in their life pick out their outfits and dictate how they spend their time, but since Cate is not presented as a mouse, the relationship was incomprehensible. There were also odd subplots: Cate is a runner, but her marathon prep is a bit unrealistic, as is her unexplained antagonistic relationship with a fellow runner. I don't regret the time I spent with this book, and it's not inconceivable that I'll return to read parts of it again, but I can't promote it whole-heartedly as a satisfactory novel or romance.