A world elsewhere
Subtitle: an American woman in wartime Germany
By: Sigrid MacRae
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 310
ISBN-13: 9780670015832
Subjects: Family; Aristocracy (Social class); Love-letters; Married people; Americans; World War, 1939-1945; Intercountry marriage; Refugees; Biography; History
Description: "The extraordinary love story of an American blueblood and a German aristocrat--and a riveting tale of survival in wartime Germany. Sigrid MacRae never knew her father, until a trove of letters revealed not only him, but also the singular story of her parents' intercontinental love affair. While visiting Paris in 1927, her American mother, Aimee, raised in a wealthy Connecticut family, falls in love with a charming, sophisticated Baltic German baron, a penniless exile of the Russian Revolution. They marry. But the harsh reality of post-World War I Germany is inescapable: a bleak economy and the rise of Hitler quash Heinrich's diplomatic ambitions, and their struggling family farm north of Berlin drains Aimee's modest fortune. In 1941, Heinrich volunteers for the Russian front and is killed by a sniper. Widowed, living in a country soon at war with her own, Aimee must fend for herself. With home and family in jeopardy, she and her six young children flee the advancing Russian army in an epic journey, back to the country she thought she'd left behind. A World Elsewhere is a stirring narrative of two hostages to history and a mother's courageous fight to save her family"--

"Sigrid MacRae's wonderful family memoir is set in the turbulent time of WWII. Her mother, who married a Russian exile in the late 1920s, wound up a widow with six children after her husband was killed fighting for the Germans. After finding a long-unopened box of love letters between her parents, MacRae set out to discover the father she never knew, and in the process came to understand the extraordinary, bi-continental and multigenerational history of her family"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 204-207) and index.
Table of contents: title: Mademoiselle Sophie's Hat; title: I Want My Mother! Give Me Back My Mother!; title: Widening Circles; title: Forfeits; title: The Bread of Exile; title: I Never Knew, Ooh, Ooh; title: What Love Could Do, Ooh, Ooh...; title: Life Is a Beautiful Dream; title: Abie's Irish Rose; title: In a Thousand Ways an Exile; title: No Ground under Anyone's Feet; title: Such Fearful Need; title: Conditions Are Terrifying; title: War Anxiety; title: More's the Pity; title: Intermezzo; title: Barbarossa; title: The Home Front; title: Keep Your Mouth Shut; title: Give Me Ten Years; title: Flight; title: Everything Passes; title: She and Her Kind; title: A Labyrinth without an Exit; title: America; title: The Mail Must Go Through; title: Epilogue.