Listen to the interview with the author here

Author: Irene Wittig (USA)   

About the book:  The rise of Nazism in Austria catapults life in Vienna into chaos.
Emma grapples with the harsh new reality of her country’s betrayal, and desperately clings to her humanity by hiding her Jewish friends. In the war’s aftermath, she finds solace in helping those in even greater need than herself.  
Friedrich teeters on the edge of what is right and his personal survival. His actions and inaction leave long-lasting repercussions that years later threaten to throw all their lives into turmoil again.  A decade after the war, Sophie - Friedrich’s niece, and the daughter of Emma’s friend - returns to Vienna from her American refuge seeking her lost history.

About the author:  Irene Wittig was born in liberated Rome to a Viennese Jewish mother and Italian father, arrived in the U.S. via Austria and Argentina, and grew up in New York, in a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors and fellow Europeans displaced by war. After studying in New York, Germany and Maryland she worked for the Dept. of Defense in Washington, DC before moving to Naples, Italy where she lived for five years. Later, she and her husband spent six years in Switzerland. After twenty years as a ceramic painter and teacher, Irene turned to writing. She and her husband have two children and four grandchildren and live in Arlington, Virginia.