The Vanishing Sky

By: L. Annette Binder

Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow

Bloomsbury presents The Vanishing Sky by L. Annette Binder, read by Laurel Lefkow.

For readers of Warlight and The Invisible Bridge, an intimate, harrowing story about a family of German citizens during World War II.

Included in the New York Times Book Review's Summer Reading Guide for Historical Fiction

“There was no shelter without her sons.”

In 1945, as the war in Germany nears its violent end, the Huber family is not yet free of its dangers or its insidious demands. Etta, a mother from a small, rural town, has two sons serving their home country: her elder, Max, on the Eastern front, and her younger, Georg, at a school for Hitler Youth. When Max returns from the front, Etta quickly realizes that something is not right—he is thin, almost ghostly, and behaving very strangely. Etta strives to protect him from the Nazi rule, even as her husband, Josef, becomes more nationalistic and impervious to Max’s condition. Meanwhile, miles away, her younger son Georg has taken his fate into his own hands, deserting his young class of battle-bound soldiers to set off on a long and perilous journey home.

The Vanishing Sky is a World War II novel as seen through a German lens, a story of the irreparable damage of war on the home front, and one family’s participation—involuntary, unseen, or direct—in a dangerous regime. Drawing inspiration from her own father’s time in the Hitler Youth, L. Annette Binder has crafted a spellbinding novel about the choices we make for country and for family.©2020 L. Annette Binder (P)2020 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Pretty disappointing

I was so intrigued about a story about a common German family who might not know of the atrocities or the depravity of WWII Germany and were just doing their duty and trying to get along in the world and make sense of the horror without being the victors. But a good idea is all it was…or I just got overly excited. This book was SO SLOW. It was a day to day story about day to day people doing day to day things. Most of the time the characters were isolated and lack any relationship or interaction. It’s a long listen for a story with minimal start and no end and nearly no action or intrigue.