These Blue Mountains: A Southern Fiction Novel with a Pianist Heroine for Book Clubs set between WWI and WWII in 1930s Appalachia and Germany by Sarah Loudin Thomas

 

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda is stunned to see Fritz's name in a photograph of an American memorial for German seamen who died near Asheville, North Carolina. Determined to reclaim his body and bring closure to his ailing mother, Hedda travels to the US. Her quest takes a shocking turn when, rather than Fritz's body, his casket contains the remains of a woman who died under mysterious circumstances.

Local deputy Garland Jones thought he'd left that dark chapter behind when he helped bury Fritz Meyer's coffin. The unexpected arrival of Hedda, a long-suffering yet captivating woman, forces him to confront how much of the truth he really knows. As they work together to uncover the identity of the woman in the casket and to unravel Fritz's fate, Hedda and Garland grow closer. But with Hedda in the US on borrowed time while Hitler rises to power in Germany, she fears she'll be forced to return home before she can put the ghosts of her past to rest.

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About The Author

 

Sarah Loudin Thomas grew up on a 100-acre farm in French Creek, WV, the seventh generation to live there. Her historical fiction is often set in West Virginia and celebrates the people, the land, and the heritage of Appalachia.

Sarah is the director of Jan Karon’s Mitford Museum in Hudson, NC. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Coastal Carolina University and is the author of the acclaimed novels The Right Kind of Fool–winner of the 2021 Selah Book of the Year–and Miracle in a Dry Season–winner of the 2015 Inspy Award. Sarah has also been a finalist for the Christy Award, ACFW Carol Award and the Christian Book of the Year Award. She and her husband live in western North Carolina.

Learn more at www.SarahLoudinThomas.com

 

My Review

 What a great job the author does putting faces of those touched by war, wars that began with Germany. A young woman pledges to marry a navy man, he goes off to fight, then isn't heard from. I can't imagine, a mom, a fiancé, in Germany waiting for fifteen years, with no word.
We travel from Europe to America, and back. We are given the beautiful mountains of North Carolina, as Hedda travels to bring home a body. Closure at last?
The lost is found, we have deportation, and secrets revealed, and all the while I was page turning for answers.
This is a love story, but I was wondering to the end if the right people would find each other? Then there are those in Germany, will they get out before its to late?
This is a read that kept giving, and I didn't know about the internment camp in NC, and I loved the epilogue!
I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Thomas Nelson, and was not required to give a positive review.