"Woods skillfully captures the disorienting mixture of heady freedom and mounting fear characterizing 1930s Berlin, and the political and gender issues she raises add contemporary relevancy.”
Description
In this multilayered historical novel set in 1930s Berlin and spanning to the United States in the 1970s, hidden identities and family secrets collide as the Weimar Republic’s cabaret scene meets Nazi Germany’s ruthless rise to power.
Berlin, 1931: Sisters raised in a Catholic orphanage, Berni and Grete Metzger are each other's whole world. That is, until life propels them to opposite sides of seedy, splendid, and violent Weimar Berlin. Berni becomes a cigarette girl, a denizen of the cabaret scene alongside her transgender best friend, who is considering a risky gender reassignment surgery. Meanwhile Grete is hired as a maid to a Nazi family and begins to form a complicated bond with their son. As Germany barrels toward the Third Reich and ruin, one of the sisters must make a devastating choice.
South Carolina, 1970: After her father’s death, Janeen Moore yearns to know more about her family history, especially the closely guarded story of her mother’s youth in Germany. One day she intercepts a letter intended for her mother: a confession written by a German woman, a plea for forgiveness. What role does Janeen’s mother play in this story, and why does she seem so distressed by recent news that a former SS officer has resurfaced in America?
An eye-opening exploration of gender and identity in pre-World War II Germany, Fräulein M. is a sweeping historical and literary novel of family life and sibling bonds, of immigrant legacy, of hidden pasts and hard choices. With its multilayered exploration of family ties and identity across time and place, this novel shines a light on a brilliant voice.
Reviews
"Debut novelist Woods is a skilled constructor of scenes that propel readers forward and lay bare the difficulties of living in complicated times ... .Readers will be moved by the Metzger sisters."
“Anyone looking for a great read. This debut novel, set in war-torn Berlin, is full of family secrets that make for a riveting can't-put-down read. Everyone's going to be talking about this one.”
"An unsettling lens into the Nazis’ tightening grasp and the way it closes around two inseparable sisters growing up in a Catholic orphanage. ... What’s engaging about the book beyond its timeless moral dilemmas (how far we’ll go to save ourselves) is its lively, well-drawn cast of characters."
