From Amazon.com - In April 1945, two dead German soldiers are brought into the church in the village of Hildrizhausen. In November 1999, Martin Slater discovers some old letters in the attic of his house in Berkshire, England. The letters suggest that Martin's mother had contacted a priest in Hildrizhausen in the 1960s. Why had she done this? What is the connection between these letters and the two dead soldiers? Martin's efforts to find the answers bring him to Germany. Here he finds himself involved with murder, with forbidden love and with a recent history that reminds him that even when people might want to forget, the past will never let them go.

From the author:
One day, while walking in the Schoenbuch Forest, I came upon a grave, a monument to a man killed just a few days before the end of WW2. The man’s name was Victor Wagner and he was 19 years old when he died. I found myself often returning to this lonely spot in the forest and over time I came to know something about the man buried there. My novel is, to a large extent, based on events surrounding the death of Victor Wagner in the forest in April/May 1945. But there is more to it than that.

During my 3-year stay in Herrenberg, Germany, I met many people who had lost relatives during the war and who still know nothing about their fate or where they fell. For nearly 60 years these memories of people have been hidden away like the soldier’s grave – a monument to the losers, the defeated and the guilty. Victor Wagner’s grave has come to symbolise, for many people, the resting place of the fallen, and for this reason I have decided to donate 25% of any profit I make to the German War Graves Commission.

The Schoenbuch Forest is really a story of those who remember. Their nationality is unimportant. I know that history tells a different story, and for years, I believed what I had been taught in school. I now know that history was in fact the residue of allied propaganda – I thought it was education. Ordinary people were no more responsible for World War 2 than I am responsible for the war in Iraq or Afghanistan in 2007.

Robert Goddard, Portsmouth, England June 2007.