All The Write Stuff: The Decision

A Berlin policeman makes a potentially life-or-death decision.

Why?

What made the difference?

The Decision

A Novel of Germany

by Karen A. Wyle

Genre: Historical WWII Fiction

A Life of Contradictions, and A Moment of Truth

It is autumn of 1938, in Hitler’s Germany, in the capital city of Berlin, perhaps a month before the devastating anti-Jewish violence of Kristallnacht. Three Jewish boys have received new bicycles — because their family has, with difficulty, arranged to leave Germany, and they will not be allowed to take much cash with them. Two of the boys are experienced bicyclists, but the youngest is less so. On a downtown street, the latter’s lack of skill causes an accident. And the traffic policeman on the scene wears, just visible under his uniform, the brown shirt of a member of Hitler's storm troopers.

What did the policeman do? The answer is known, because the preceding paragraph describes an actual event. But why did the policeman make the choice he did? What life did he live that led him to make it? And what happened to him, while the boys and their family escaped, lived, and thrived? This novel imagines possible answers to these questions. In doing so, it takes the reader into the heart of the experience of wartime, and the repercussions of such conflict for years thereafter.

"The Decision both stands out from the crowd as an important examination of how attitudes are changed and friendships buffeted by clashing ideologies, and lends [itself] to classroom or reading group discussion about all kinds of subplots intrinsic to a complete understanding of the Jewish and German experience." Midwest Book Review

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Book Links:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decision-Novel-Germany-Karen-Wyle-ebook/dp/B0D5TLKYSZ

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/the-decision-a-novel-of-germany-by-karen-a-wyle

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213669922-the-decision-a-novel-of-germany

About the Author

Karen A. Wyle was born a Connecticut Yankee, but eventually settled in Bloomington, Indiana. She now considers herself a Hoosier. She is an appellate attorney, photographer, and mother of two.

Wyle's thoughtful and compassionate fiction includes SF, historical romance, Historical fiction and fantasy. She has also collaborated with several wonderful illustrators to produce picture books. Relying on her legal background, she has written one nonfiction resource, explaining American law to authors, law students, and anyone else interested in better understanding the legal landscape. Wyle's voice is the product of a lifetime spent reading both literary and genre fiction. Her personal history has led her to focus on often-intertwined themes of family, communication, the impossibility of controlling events, and the persistence of unfinished business.

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