Finding Clara

For fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Light Between Oceans comes Finding Clara, a tale of dark secrets buried under the ruins of postwar Germany.

1946. Essen, Germany

Clara. Once heiress to the Falkenberg Ironworks and a wartime icon; now on the run from the Allied authorities, accused of complicity in her father’s war crimes.

Jakob. A charming black-marketeer, badly wounded in the war but determined to help what’s left of his family survive the peace.

Willy. A teenage boy diligently guarding a mine full of Wehrmacht supplies, his only friend a canary named Gertrud. Convinced the war isn’t over, he refuses to surrender his post.

When Clara returns to her hometown expecting to find her best friend, she finds everything she once knew in ruins. But in war-ravaged Germany, it’s not just the buildings that are scarred: everyone is changed, everyone lives in the wreckage of their own pasts.

To survive, Clara must hide who she is; but to live, she must face up to the truth of what she’s done.

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“What a great debut! I loved this book, especially since it looks at the aftermath of war from a rare perspective: the appalling suffering that Germans faced in their devastated cities after 1945, and the guilt of those who’d followed the Nazi rules. It still haunts me, days after finishing it.”

–Liz Trenow, NYT bestselling author of The Poppy Factory and The Silk Weaver