Hugh Rosen

Silent Battlefields: a Novel Hugh Rosen

Selig Kruger, once a dedicated Hitler Youth and committed Nazi soldier, confronts his past when he meets Eva, the woman whose life he spared nearly thirty years ago.

She remembered learning from the bear man shortly after the incident that two German soldiers were killed by a third. Perhaps he was the one who took their lives. She believed that if she were ever to find out the answers, now was not the time to deluge him with her emotions and questions.

Her persistent gaze released a rush of memories flooding Selig?s mind. In the secret space of his consciousness he saw a young, frightened girl huddling on the floor of an attic closet. Without even thinking about it Selig placed his index finger vertically against his lips. It was the same gesture Selig had performed twenty-eight years ago on the attic floor of a house in a Polish village.

?It?s really you then?? Eva asked in astonishment.

Selig was stunned at the realization that this was, indeed, the same young girl whose life he had spared. The same girl whose destiny he had obsessed about over almost three decades.

An elegiac tale of regret from both sides of a cataclysmic war. Rosen, a professor and psychotherapist, infuses the narrative with graceful candor and palpable physical and psychological conflicts. The author does not brand any of his convincing characters as villain, martyr or victim, and by weaving together Eva and Selig's parallel lives as saved and savior, he offers pointed, well-drawn insights about war and its terrible, protracted aftermath. A complex blend of memory, cultural identity, the ties that bind us and the ghosts that haunt us.

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