The Undertaking

Peter Faber is a soldier desperate to escape the madness of war if only by a three-week honeymoon leave. His new wife is Katharine Spinell, a resourceful young woman from Berlin who anticipates the likelihood of a widow’s pension should Peter die in battle. When they finally meet there is an attraction as unexpected as it is intense. 

But as Peter returns to Stalingrad, and as Katherine ruthlessly works her way into Nazi high society, the tides of war change. So do Peter and Katharine’s fates and fortunes, in this “bold, honest novel about Nazi greed and moral blankness... and the small people who are inseparably part of a great ravagement” (The Guardian). 

A “deeply impressive... devastating but quite stunning” novel about doomed love and ambition in Nazi Germany (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).