The Vanishing Sky

A Novel

L. Annette Binder

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781635574685
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for The Vanishing Sky
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Also by L. Annette Binder
• Title Page
• Contents
• Epigraph
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve
• Chapter Thirteen
• Chapter Fourteen
• Chapter Fifteen
• Chapter Sixteen
• Chapter Seventeen
• Chapter Eighteen
• Chapter Nineteen
• Chapter Twenty
• Chapter Twenty-One
• Chapter Twenty-Two
• Chapter Twenty-Three
• Chapter Twenty-Four
• Chapter Twenty-Five
• Chapter Twenty-Six
• Chapter Twenty-Seven
• Chapter Twenty-Eight
• Chapter Twenty-Nine
• Chapter Thirty
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on the Author
• Reading Group Guide
• Copyright