This Terrible Beauty: A Novel
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PRAISE FOR THIS TERRIBLE BEAUTY
“Schumann’s graceful evocations of people and place make it hard to forget.”
—Maria Hummel, author of Motherland and the Reese Witherspoon book club pick Still Lives
“Deeply relevant to our current times, This Terrible Beauty explores the lengths to which we will go to find love and the sacrifices we make for family and community. I fell in love with these characters and came away heartened and hopeful.”
—Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men
“A compelling and richly layered story of love, motherhood, art, and ultimately self-preservation—this is a vivid, rapidly paced historical novel. Unputdownable!”
—Jillian Cantor, USA Today bestselling author of The Lost Letter and In Another Time
“Schumann’s vivid focus reveals characters who crumble with heartbreak and rise with strength, and above all draws her readers in and never lets them go.”
—Rachel Barenbaum, bestselling author of A Bend in the Stars
“Set in postwar Germany, this gorgeously written, sweeping, cinematic story is also a riveting and romantic page-turner. Get ready to put everything on hold and let yourself get lost in this sensual tale.”
—Erica Ferencik, bestselling author of The River at Night, a #1 Oprah.com pick, and Into the Jungle
“A complex, moving story of love and loss, beautifully written. This Terrible Beauty explores the critical nature of art as a lens through which we can understand history and asks us to be mindful of the ways we choose to look at the world. This is one historical fiction fans can’t miss.”
—Olivia Hawker, Washington Post bestselling author of The Ragged Edge of Night
“This Terrible Beauty kept me turning the pages long into the night. Katrin Schumann evokes an often-forgotten time and place to weave a story that is equally captivating and fascinating.”
—Eoin Dempsey, bestselling author of White Rose, Black Forest
PRAISE FOR THE FORGOTTEN HOURS
“Schumann’s is a carefully constructed novel that skillfully weaves past and present, slowly planting clues that help unlock the narrative’s central mystery while ratcheting up tension . . . The fast-moving plot and compelling, layered characters make for an addictive and incredibly timely read. A page-turner that also speaks to broader questions of sexual abuse, family loyalty, and the mutability of memory.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Schumann’s debut novel brings a new perspective to sexual assault and how it affects families . . . Flashbacks to the past are intertwined with the narrative, and the slow reveal of detail will leave readers wanting more. With a surprise twist, this work is sure to please. For fans of Jodi Picoult.”
—Library Journal
“Schumann crafts a powerfully compelling story of family loyalties, teenage friendships, and the fickleness of memory. Timely and provocative, this first novel will appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty, Paula Hawkins, and Jenna Blum.”
—Booklist
“A riveting story . . . Schumann has an eye for detail, an ear for the rhythmic sentence, and a voice that is clear and resonant.”
—New York Journal of Books
“A deeply moving story about friendship and love, yearning and passion, memory and loss. The Forgotten Hours is a brilliant debut from a writer of uncommon grace.”
—William Landay, New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob
“A relevant, compelling, and compassionate look at the torture of conflicted loyalties and the slipperiness of truth.”
—Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us and The Lost Family
“As fictional characters go, Katie Gregory seems not so much imagined as compelled into being by the unique forces of the times—the perfect envoy to accompany you into the red-hot cauldron of accused and accuser. That Katie is neither of these but bound by love to both makes her conflict more gut wrenching and the possibilities more terrifying. Add to this Schumann’s gift for knowing—and conjuring—her character’s heart, and you have a story that makes you feel it’s your heart at risk, your life on the line. You may lose track of these hours, but you won’t forget them.”
—Tim Johnston, New York Times bestselling author of Descent
“With an elegance of style surprising in a first novel, Schumann shows how when we seek truth about the past, the most treacherous secrets are those we keep from ourselves.”
—Carol Anshaw, New York Times bestselling author of Carry the One
“The Forgotten Hours is a wise reminder that coming-of-age stories aren’t only for the very young. Katie Gregory’s need to confront her own youthful beliefs and desires is something familiar—and compelling—to us all. There is so much insight in these pages, so much compassion, all woven into a mystery I couldn’t put down.”
—Robin Black, author of Life Drawing and If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This
“The Forgotten Hours asks important questions about memory, adolescent understanding, the age of consent, and what men have gotten away with since time immemorial. Katrin Schumann has crafted a powerful tale for the #MeToo era that should resonate far beyond this cultural moment.”
—Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet and June
“The Forgotten Hours is a stunning novel about trauma and shame, loyalty and truth. Ten years after an alleged crime destroyed her family, Katie Gregory returns to an abandoned cabin she prefers to forget. As memories of her last evening there bring conflicting emotions, she struggles to rediscover her ability to trust and her faith in love. Was her father guilty of the assault for which he was convicted? What part did she play in the events of that night, and can she move beyond her own guilt? Trying to unravel the answers before the heart-pounding finish will keep readers up way past bedtime. A must read for book clubs.”
—Barbara Claypole White, bestselling author of The Perfect Son and The Promise Between Us
“For me, the best indicator of a good book is when you’re thinking about the characters even when you aren’t reading, wondering what’s going to happen to them. This was definitely the case with The Forgotten Hours. I thoroughly enjoyed this well-written, compelling story.”
—Marybeth Mayhew Whalen, bestselling author of When We Were Worthy and cofounder of She Reads
OTHER NOVELS BY KATRIN SCHUMANN
The Forgotten Hours
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2020 by Katrin Schumann
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542020800 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1542020808 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781542000062
ISBN-10: 1542000068
Cover design by David Drummond
Map of World War II Occupation Areas in Europe, 1945: INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo 4
For Peter & Occu,
who guided me with wisdom and love
CONTENTS
START READING
MAP
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
1
2
3
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5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
PART TWO
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
PART THREE
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
PART FOUR
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Let us plow and build our nation,
Learn and work as never yet,
That a free new generation
Faith in its own strength beget!
German youth, for whom the striving
Of our people is at one,
You are Germany’s reviving,
And over our Germany,
There is shining sun;
There is shining sun.
—East German national anthem,
Johannes R. Becher, 1949
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
—“Easter, 1916,”
William Butler Yeats
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Though this novel is inspired by actual historical events, the characters are entirely fictional. In creating this story, I have altered certain details for the sake of the narrative, while striving to be true to the realities of the era. For example, the fictional seaside town of Saargen is a composite of Saßnitz and Sagard, yet Rügen is a real island in the Baltic, bombed during the war and controlled for forty years by the Russians. It became part of the German Democratic Republic and is referred to in this book as the DDR, as that is how the characters would have thought of it. For more information on research and sources used in imagining this story, please see www.katrinschumann.com.
PROLOGUE
Chicago, Illinois
Spring 1961
There are eight beads, one for every year of her daughter’s life. Under Bettina’s thumb and forefinger, some of them are rough and some smooth, a few with sharp edges that catch on her skin. They’re cheaply made, bright pink and blue and green and yellow, like sweets. They hang on the soft leather of her camera strap. Bettina has rolled them between her fingertips so often—hundreds of times, thousands, maybe—that each one seems to have its own personality.
As she makes her way through them one by one, she falls into a rhythm of thinking, a kind of reassembling of scenes from Annaliese’s childhood. It’s total immersion, being steeped in the texture of a regular life, the wondrous light of ordinary moments flooding Bettina’s mind.
First bead.
At one year old, Annaliese has the full cheeks of a healthy baby, pinkened by sharp sea breezes and her mother’s milk. She takes her first faltering steps, and when she succeeds at crossing the threshold from the kitchen to the front room, her gummy smile changes the shape of her face, sparks her eyes into knowing.
At two she loves to torment Eberle, the cat, yanking his tail until he turns on her, quick to betray the child’s trust. Anna’s damp fingers grasping at fur, pulling on bone; she doesn’t understand yet that she has the power to cause pain.
When the child is three, Bettina pictures her daintily placing the fallen petals of the old Rosa rugosa into her mouth, barely hesitating, turning the velvet petals on her tongue, willing to try anything.
Anna is bright, unstoppable, and at age four she holds court over the other children in the crèche, pretending to read stories aloud and lecturing them with a pursed mouth. Her baby belly is gone, her legs lengthening. She will be tall.
When she is five years old, she discovers the magic of the letters on the page, their clusters beginning to create meaning and momentum; words have become stories. She holds her grandfather’s dusty books in her palms, a grave look on her face. The old German script is indecipherable, but she knows now that one day she’ll be able to read these books from beginning to end.
At age six she swims with a friend off the beach in Binz, the decrepit mansions towering above the shoreline, the waters of the Baltic swirling around her thighs, her muscles pressing against the current that tries to bully her out into the ocean, carry her northward, away from her island home.
Bettina hesitates, eyes closed.
By serendipity, the seventh bead on the strap is a multifaceted one, the same size as the others but from a different manufacturer. She often pauses here, rolling it between her fingers. Should this pause lead her mind in other directions, she invariably wonders, or should she keep going on her trajectory? It is the seventh bead, so that means Anna is seven years old and it is 1960, but the child is not aware of what this means. She does not know about the Cold War—though she will have learned about the revolution in Cuba, its young socialist government. This has been celebrated all over East Germany with parades, striped flags snapping in the wind. So today, Bettina’s mind takes her to an image of the Young Pioneers, and she sees her daughter with a blue kerchief knotted at her chin. She is singing, her chest swelling with each inhalation, giving it her all, her voice warbling and high—her view of the world narrow, shaped by the island, by her history, by German history.
The last bead now. Eight.
At eight, her daughter is licking her lips as she scrapes the lead of her pencil across the checkered pages of her schoolbook, doing her homework. Does she still sleep in the little room that was once the maid’s room in better times, long before the First World War, or has she moved to a bigger room that can fit a desk? Perhaps she does her homework on the dining room table, where two generations of the Heilstroms sat to take their evening meals.
Bettina’s mind wanders like a swimmer reaching for some murky underwater spot, and she tries to bring herself back into her invented moments, grasping blindly. She has a rule when she completes this ritual: Only good thoughts, and no regrets.
She sees her daughter in the little museum in Stralsund, a hand-knit sweater hanging from angular shoulders, head turned toward an old photograph on the wall. She loves art . . .
Bettina snaps open her eyes. Maybe Anna loves art, but maybe she loves numbers?
She screws her eyes shut: Annaliese’s lips are parted, her concentration intense, just like her mother’s. She is looking at a picture, a picture of—
Outside, a car honks in the trash-strewed street. Bettina jumps up, chilled, irretrievably distracted. It’s April, and the weather in Chicago is raw. If she saw her daughter on the street, she might not even recognize her. An ocean divides them, and the years have passed unobserved but for these beads, the cheap plastic a constant reminder of what could have been and what is not.
PART ONE
1
Rügen, Germany
Spring 1943
Bettina rests her bicycle against a wall and unhooks the basket from the rear. A throng crowding the square emits a buzz like cicadas, the sound swelling and shrinking with the direction of the wind. It must be years since so many people congregated here, perhaps since before the war began. She wishes she’d brought along her father’s camera, but she was running late and forgot it on the sideboard. A haphazard regiment of soldiers sits on wooden chairs on a podium while a full band plays, but the music is barely discernible above the noisy chatter. Five or six officers wearing dark uniforms stand on the platform, hands on hips. Red banners hang from the c
obbler’s and the tailor’s: DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLES. People line the edges of the square, holding long poles with flags at the top embroidered with white swastikas and lined with heavy black fringe.
Yesterday someone slipped a leaflet under the door of her family’s shop, proclaiming, Die tausendjährige Eiche kommt nach Saargen—“The thousand-year oak is coming to Saargen.” In all the town squares throughout the Reich, oak trees are being planted as symbols of the Führer’s vision for Germany. Belatedly, Bettina’s island village is to get its first one that afternoon. Her father is at home in bed, unable to move about, coughing alarmingly dark streaks of blood into his handkerchief.
“Are you sure, my love?” he asked when she told him she was attending the ceremony. The whites of his eyes were the color of old egg yolk, and his lips had lost their fullness. “I don’t believe what the radio is telling us. Things seem dire, no?”
What he wasn’t saying was that he worries constantly about how she will fare once he is gone—a young woman alone in the world, a country gone to ruin. She took his hand in hers. “Oh, Papa. I’m seventeen! I’ll be fine, really.”
Searching his daughter’s face, he smiled. “Hm. You always did have a strong will. Too late to change that now. But be careful, you hear? Anyway, who knows—maybe I’ll live to see the end of this goddamn war after all.”
Now the sky is turning the color of steel as the afternoon sun sinks beyond the horizon. Bettina hugs her coat to her body and looks around her for a decent vantage point. That’s when she spots a regular customer from the fish shop, Werner Nietz. Every Friday afternoon he comes to the store, and he always chats with Papa; at least he used to. Now her father is too weak to work anymore, and Werner conducts his business with Bettina. She had long noticed the dreadful limp, his pale poet eyes. Though he is much younger than her father, he reminds her a bit of him: barrel shaped, gentle. She used to wonder why he wasn’t fighting (almost all the men from the village are gone), but over time she realized the limp, of course, explained everything.
Werner is standing a few meters from her, and though surrounded on all sides by a jovial crowd, he’s embroiled in some sort of argument. Two soldiers wearing filthy jackets are waving papers in his face. The taller one, his face scarred and shadowed by dark stubble, seems especially riled up. He jabs at Werner’s chest and shouts into his face. Werner turns his head away, as though repulsed by foul breath. He appears so mild, absolutely harmless; what can he possibly have done to anger these men?