Für Elise

Gold Medal Winner, Historical Fiction: Romance -- 2026 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY).He survived the POW camp by holding onto hope. She survived the war by letting it go.In 1956, more than a decade after the end of World War II, Hans Becker is finally released from a Soviet POW camp and returns to Germany. The reunion is disheartening-his beloved Dresden is largely blackened rubble, and his feelings of disorientation and melancholy hinder his attempt to revive the life-and love-he left behind.Elise, the once delicate teenager whose memory Hans carried in his heart, has, through unspeakable trauma, transformed into a strong, independent woman skeptical of love. Yet just as she and Hans can spot traces of splendor in the ruins and oppression of Iron Curtain-era Dresden, so they each can see flashes of what attracted them to their long-ago sweetheart. But they-and their world-have changed so much. Are they willing to risk everything to seek a new beginning?