Since he’s thin, with no sign of physical injury, she decides that if she feeds him enough, he’ll get better. All she knows is that Max is coming home to Heidenfeld, their small, rural town, and that she’ll take care of him, as always.īut when Max steps off the train - and in succeeding days, when his strange behavior draws notice and gossip, as at church - Etta realizes something’s wrong with him. Etta doesn’t ask herself why, if the army is ready to conscript fifteen-year-old Georg, Max would be discharged. But at least her elder son, Max, is coming home to stay, after serving on the Eastern Front. Etta Huber, who has one teenage son with the Hitler Youth, Georg, prays for his safety, willing with all her heart that he’ll only be sent to build fortifications, not to fight. Yet the government-controlled radio continues to promise final, total victory, demanding ever-greater sacrifice. In 1945, Germany’s enemies are pulverizing the country with high explosives and pounding its armies from east and west. Dimensions: 9.6 in H | 6.4 in W | 1.Review: The Vanishing Sky, by L.Annette Binder has crafted a spellbinding novel about the daring choices we make for country and for family. Drawing inspiration from her own father’s time in the Hitler Youth, L.

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.

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. Etta strives to protect him from the Nazi rule, even as her husband, Josef, becomes more nationalistic and impervious to Max’s condition. When Max returns from the front, Etta quickly realizes that something is not right-he is thin, almost ghostly, and behaving very strangely. 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. 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.

The vanishing sky by l annette binder