The House by the Lake by Ella Carey is historical
romance, mystery and in many ways, a reminder of a past that can too easily be
repeated. Watch the video below or at https://youtu.be/umxbkxOpuXU
or skip below the video to read the full review.
Max is part of the privileged, elite German class who has
fallen in love with Isabella from Paris, France. But Adolf Hitler is rising and
so is his Nazi party. There are many things about the Nazis that Max does not
like, such as their hatred of minorities, but he is willing to a certain extent
to look away from that because Hitler appears to be the only one offering
Germany a way forward from its crushing defeat of World War I. Too late, he
realizes that despite all his reservations, he will be forced to join the Nazi
party and the military as Germany begins to invade its neighbors. Not only does
his own life hang in the balance but also every member of his family’s lives
depends on his choice.
As we switch to the present day, Anna lives in San Francisco
with her aging grandfather. Max is now at the end of his life, and he has one
regret. He asks Anna to return to Germany to recover an item he’d hidden below
the floorboard. As she journeys to Old Prussia to perform what turns out to be
Max’s dying wish, she finds herself in the midst of a mystery. The village near
her grandfather’s old estate is stuck in the distant past like a ghost town and
when they discover her identity and her relationship to the estate, many become
hostile toward her. She finds a Berlin attorney willing to help her recover the
item but it places both of them on a path that will uncover secrets of the past
and change their own lives in the process.
Max’s position in the 1930s and the choices he must make
remind me all too much of the rise of current nationalism, along with its
consequences. It is well worth reading; not only is it a war-time romance
between a French woman and a German man and a personal mystery that affects
generations, but also a lesson in what happens in the early stages of a party’s
rise to power, the ability for people to look away from those aspects they
don’t like… and what happens when their eyes are opened too late.
