Check out Ellie Midwood's fabulous new book — No Woman's Land: A Holocaust Novel #NewRelease #HistoricalFiction #mustread

No Woman's Land

A Holocaust Novel

By Ellie Midwood

This novel is based on the inspiring and moving love story of Ilse Stein, a German Jew, and Willy Schultz, a Luftwaffe Captain in the Minsk ghetto, who risked his life to save the one he loved the most. 

When the last of the Jews’ rights are stripped in 1941, Ilse’s family is deported to a Minsk ghetto. Confined to a Sonderghetto and unable to speak the locals’ language, Ilse struggles to support the surviving members of her family. Befriended by a local underground member Rivka, Ilse partakes in small acts of resistance and sabotage to help her fellow Jews escape to the partisans.

A few months later, after losing almost his entire brigade of workers to one of the bloodiest massacres conducted by the SS, a local administrative officer Willy Schultz summons the survivors to form a new brigade. Ilse’s good looks immediately catch his eye, and he makes her a leader of the new unit and later, an office worker. Soon, an unlikely romance blossoms amid death and gore, moving a Nazi officer to go to great risks to protect not only Ilse but as many others as possible and allowing a Jewish girl to open her heart to the former enemy. Knowing that the ghetto would soon be liquidated, Willy Schultz swears to save Ilse, even if the cost would be his own life. 

“We live together, or we die together,” - an ultimate oath of love in the most harrowing setting. 

Dark, haunting, but full of hope, “No Woman’s Land” is a testament to the love that is stronger than fear and death itself.

Excerpt

We looked at each other for a long time without speaking. A radio was playing softly in the background. Zarah Leander was singing about love. I suddenly recalled an anecdote that women used to discuss with such delight at the parachute factory in Frankfurt. Reportedly, Minister of Propaganda Dr. Goebbels once asked the Swedish actress if Zarah was a Jewish name, to which she wittily replied, ‘and what about Josef?’ Dr. Josef Goebbels chuckled at the jest and signed her up with the UFA, a major German film company. She became an instant success.

I smiled dreamily at the memory. I was free then. Free to walk the streets and sneak inside the cinemas even. Free…

“What is it?” Schultz mirrored my grin.

He wanted to hear the story that made me smile. He wished to be a part of my world but that part was long gone and dead and there was nothing to tell any longer.

“Why do you want to kill us all?” I asked him instead.

He pulled back slowly, blinking at me in astonishment. “Why would you say that? I don’t want to kill anyone.”

I outstretched my hand. My index finger stopped within centimeters from his Party pin. I’d never touch it. Even the mere thought of it was repulsive. “This… thing; it says that you do.”

“It’s just a harmless pin.”

“Yes, it is. It may be harmless on its own but every single person, who took every tiny bit of our rights, wore one. The new director at my school, who made me sit in the back; SA troopers who trashed Papa’s grocery in 1938; Gestapo agents, who came to our apartment and gave Papa an order for our resettlement; the office clerk who gave me the blank in which I had to sign that my German nationality lapses and I become a stateless person.” I shrugged. “It takes a village to kill a Jew,” I finished, purposely distorting the saying.

I half-expected for him to order me out and never to come back. To start protesting and defending his position perhaps, explain that “certain things that a young girl like myself didn’t understand,” talk politics and what not. Instead, Schultz reached for the pin and slowly undid it, pulled it out of the cloth leaving a narrow hole in its place and lowered it onto the table.

“Better?”

When I didn’t reply anything – I really didn’t know what to say – he pulled the top-drawer open, swiped the pin into it and closed it again.

“Are you planning on taking it off and hiding it every time I come here?” I felt a ghost of a grin growing on my face again.

“No. I plan never to wear it again. It should make things easier, don’t you think?”

“Won’t you get in trouble?”

“I’d rather risk the wrath of my superiors than yours.”

“I’m not in a position to threaten you with my wrath, as you call it.”

“Perhaps not openly. But sometimes you give me one of those hateful looks, and I wish for the ground to open up and swallow me. You have very expressive eyes, you know.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Sometimes you do.”

“It’s the uniform that I hate, not you.”

He was suddenly unbuttoning his jacket. Under my uncomprehending gaze, he promptly removed it, folded it inside out to hide the insignia and flattened it over his lap.

“There. Ordinary civilian shirt. Happy?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God. I thought you’d make me strip bare, for a moment there.”

I almost succeeded in hiding a smile. He almost succeeded at hiding his too… almost.

The Coffee Pot Book Club

★★★★★ 

Highly Recommended

Read the full review HERE!

Pick up your copy of

No Woman's Land

Amazon UK • Amazon US

Ellie Midwood

Ellie Midwood is an award-winning, best-selling historical fiction writer. She's a health-obsessed yoga enthusiast, a neat freak, an adventurer, Nazi Germany history expert, polyglot, philosopher, a proud Jew, and a doggie mama.

Ellie lives in New York with her fiancé and their Chihuahua named Shark Bait.

Awards:

Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2016) - "The Girl from Berlin: Standartenführer's Wife"

Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2016) - "The Austrian"(honorable mention)

New Apple - 2016 Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing - "The Austrian"(official selection)

Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2017) - "Emilia"

Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2018) - "A Motherland's Daughter, A Fatherland's Son"

Connect with Ellie: 

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