In her debut novel, The Vanishing Sky, drawn from her own family’s experiences during World War II, L. Miles away, the Hubers’ bookish younger son, Georg - who is even less suited for the physical demands of military life than a typical 15-year-old - falls in love with another boy at the Hitler School and dreams of deserting his post, two crimes punishable by death. Annette Binder has crafted a spellbinding novel about the choices we make for country and for family.Meanwhile, Etta’s husband, Josef - haunted by an injury that cut his own wartime service short decades ago and ashamed that the creeping loss of his faculties cost him his teaching job and prevents him from fighting for the fatherland now - seems to resent Max more each day. Drawing inspiration from her own father’s time in the Hitler Youth, L. The Vanishing Sky is a World War II novel as seen through a German lens, a story of the irreparable damage of war on the home front and one family’s participation - involuntary, unseen, or direct - in a dangerous regime.

Meanwhile, miles away, her younger son Georg has taken his fate into his own hands, deserting his young class of battle-bound soldiers to set off on a long and perilous journey home. Etta strives to protect him from the Nazi rule, even as her husband, Josef, becomes more nationalistic and impervious to Max’s condition. When Max returns from the front, Etta quickly realizes that something is not right - he is thin, almost ghostly and behaving very strangely. Etta, a mother from a small, rural town, has two sons serving their home country: her elder, Max, on the Eastern front and her younger, Georg, at a school for Hitler Youth. In 1945, as the war in Germany nears its violent end, the Huber family is not yet free of its dangers or its insidious demands. Included in the New York Times Book Review's Summer Reading Guide for Historical Fiction. Annette Binder, read by Laurel Lefkow.įor fans of Warlight and The Invisible Bridge, an intimate, harrowing story about a family of German citizens during World War II. Bloomsbury presents The Vanishing Sky by L.

The vanishing sky by l annette binder