Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined--an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel. Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany's defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband's ancestors, an...

"Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany's defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband's ancestors. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband's brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows. As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband's resistance...

The story finds university historian Vicki Bliss and her colleague, Tony, trying to track down a lost piece of German art, the last work of a master wood carver who died in the 16th century. Most of the story takes place in a medieval castle in a small German town, complete with a mysterious late-night spectre, secret passageways, and a bloody history reaching clear back to the time when the missing carving was created.