Set in a small town in Germany during World War II, the book's main character is a former friar who is struggling to atone for a past failing which is revealed gradually through the course of the book. He enters into an arranged marriage with desperate widow to help her raise her children. As part of his search for redemption, he joins a resistance movement called the Red Orchestra and acts as a messenger.
At the end of the book the author explains that the main character was based upon her husband's grandfather who was indeed part of a resistance movement within Nazi Germany. She then goes on to state that the book is a cautionary tale about how there are very dangerous parallels between events in the US today and the spread of the poison that enabled the Nazi atrocities. Her remarks had me in tears because it feels as though we are very much poised right now on the ragged edge of night. She wrote:
"We are fools to think that the past remains in the past. History is our guilty conscience; it will not let us rest. Perhaps we will never learn the origin of this sickness, but we understand its cure. We are the White Rose, and the Edelweiss Pirates. We are Widerstand- resistance- you and I. No force can silence us, unless we permit silence. I prefer to roar.
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