Eva's Cousin
“An intimate portrait of two women at the center of history and how innocence itself can be a crime against humanity. My book of the year.”
Linda Grant, Orange Prize–winning author
In the summer of 1944, twenty-year-old Marlene is thrilled to visit her older cousin, Eva Braun-Adolf Hitler's mistress-at the Führer's Bavarian mountain retreat. There, Marlene finds herself in a strange paradise, a world of opulence and imminent danger, of freedom and surveillance.
The two women sneak off and skinny-dip in a nearby lake, watch films in the Führer's private cinema, and flirt with the SS officers at the dinner table-one of whom will become Marlene's first lover.
But soon a clandestine mission of mercy forces Marlene to question her allegiance to both her cousin and her country-and to face the chilling reality that exists outside her sheltered world.
Praise