Borders : A Novel

A sweeping novel of World War II, set in the Ardennes, from the acclaimed author of Child Wonder The Ardennes, a forested, mountainous borderland that spans France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg, was crucial to Hitler's invasion of France and host to the Battle of the Bulge. In a small valley among these borders lives Robert, born of an affair between an American GI and the Belgian nurse who rescued him. In his father's absence, Robert finds a mentor in Markus Hebel, who has faked blindness ever since serving as a Wehrmacht radio operator in Russia. Markus, in turn, confides his secret to Robert--and then he tells the story of his own son, whose fanatical loyalty to Hitler left him trapped during the siege of Stalingrad. In Borders , Roy Jacobsen brilliantly layers these stories of impossible choices between familial love and national identity, culminating in a nuanced, probing novel of shifting wartime loyalties.