A Light between Shadows

The year was 1937. At just nine years old, Clara Monroe is forced to leave her London home as she accompanies her father, a British infiltrator sent on a highly perilous, covert mission to assassinate Adolf Hitler himself, to Nazi-occupied Berlin. As her father masquerades as a Nazi officer, Clara and her mother likewise put on the masks of loyal, German Nazis. But beneath the mask, Clara is a young English girl desperate for home, petrified, and sickened by Nazi ideology.

Seven years later, Clara is sixteen and just as horrified, if not more so, as World War II steals the lives of millions and the end-goal of her father’s mission approaches. Nonetheless, Clara is hurled even deeper into danger when she meets runaway Jew David Rosen. Despite the risk, Clara decides to help hide David from the Nazis’ cruel grasp. As time passes, the two eventually fall for each other in a sweet but dangerous romance. But as the mission that brought her to Berlin in the first place spirals out of control, Clara is forced to flee Germany and David himself.

Years after the war’s end, Clara, though heartbroken and still haunted by David, is engaged and settled in New York. But when she runs into David again against all odds, she is immersed in bittersweet memories of lost love. Even so, when the familiar sparks fly, Clara feels just as vulnerable as she did in Germany when she finds herself torn between two completely different lives: one with her kind, caring fiancé, and one with the man who taught her how to love in the midst of a horribly unloving war.

-- Anapatricia Celaya