skeletons at the feast by chris bohjalian

Meanwhile, different officers were visiting neighboring estates as well, and the Emmerichs were told that at some point in the coming month hundreds of foreigners and old men would follow them, and descend on the estate to actually construct the trench.Īnd while the very idea of an antitank trench was alarming, the presence of all those handsome young men-the Germans, the Brits, and that one very young Scot-made it a burden Anna was willing to shoulder.

When it was complete, the trench would span the length of the district, bisecting some farms, skirting the edges of others. They were planning to mark a groove through the estate that would be the start of an antitank trench. Seven of them, sent from the prison camp to help with the harvest.Īnd a week after the POWs arrived at Kaminheim, when the corn was almost completely harvested and everyone was about to begin to gather the sugar beets and the apples, there came four naval officers in search of a plow. The soldiers were either missing or disfigured or dead.īut then came the POWs. And, as the war had dragged on, the pool of marriage prospects-in Anna’s mind, often enough that meant merely her older brother Werner’s acquaintances-dried up completely. Usually, it was only when one of the local soldiers was home on leave that Anna and her girlfriends ever saw the sorts of young men with whom, in different times, they might have danced. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.

Skillfully portraying the flesh and blood of history, Chris Bohjalian has crafted a rich tapestry that puts a face on one of the twentieth century’s greatest tragedies–while creating, perhaps, a masterpiece that will haunt readers for generations. Perhaps not since The English Patient has a novel so deftly captured both the power and poignancy of romance and the terror and tragedy of war. Their flight will test both Anna’s and Callum’s love, as well as their friendship with Manfred–assuming any of them even survive. And there is a twenty-six-year-old Wehrmacht corporal, who the pair know as Manfred–who is, in reality, Uri Singer, a Jew from Germany who managed to escape a train bound for Auschwitz.Īs they work their way west, they encounter a countryside ravaged by war. There is her lover, Callum Finella, a twenty-year-old Scottish prisoner of war who was brought from the stalag to her family’s farm as forced labor.

In January 1945, in the waning months of World War II, a small group of people begin the longest journey of their lives: an attempt to cross the remnants of the Third Reich, from Warsaw to the Rhine if necessary, to reach the British and American lines.Īmong the group is eighteen-year-old Anna Emmerich, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats.

Skeletons at the feast by chris bohjalian