The Road Beyond Ruin Pdf

ISBN: B07B9FXDWJ
Title: The Road Beyond Ruin Pdf

For some people in post–World War II Germany, the battle is not over.

August 1945. As Stefano, an Italian POW, heads toward home across war-ravaged Germany, he encounters a young child beside his dead mother. Unable to leave him to an unknown fate, Stefano takes the boy with him, finding refuge in a seemingly abandoned house in a secluded woodland.

But the house is far from vacant. Stefano wakes at the arrival of its owner, Erich, a former German soldier, who invites the travelers to stay until they can find safe passage home. Stefano cautiously agrees, intrigued by the disarming German, his reclusive neighbor Rosalind, and her traumatized husband, Georg. Stefano is also drawn to Monique, the girl in a photograph on Rosalind’s wall, who went missing during the war.

But when he discovers letters written by Monique, a darker truth emerges. This place of refuge could be one of reckoning, and the secrets of the past might prevent the travelers from ever getting home.

The Road Beyond Perfection For the past several months I have despaired of finding a good WWII novel; I would have even settled for a decent one. But alas. All that seemed to flood the market were tales of tepid romance set against the war as nothing more than wallpaper; of silly female spies without the sense to come in out of the rain, much less slink around unsuccessfully in enemy territory; equally vapid women running errands for the French Resistance which was apparently as numerous as the entire US army; and more Harlequin romances; and more tales where it was painfully clear that the authors had confined their research to a couple of suspect Wiki articles.So what’s a reader to do?Like the answer to my “please, send me a good WWII book!” prayer, I find this jewel nestling among the all-too-frequent dross of the First Reads. Certainly, I was skeptical, as a reader would naturally be after being burned so often, and I nearly went for the suspense category. But I took the chance.Wowza!This is precisely what I’d been wanting: a complex tale of people surviving through the war and attempting to survive its aftermath. The characters, from Erich to Rosalind to Stefano, are all damaged souls whose humanity and empathy has not been entirely obliterated by war and extermination and barbarity and a deep coldness, a lack of soul, with which there is no reasoning. None of these people are clichés, none are one-dimensional, and none will leave you unaffected.The settings are grim. They are presented as a bleak, despairing lunar landscape of ruin, whether in Berlin or the fire-ravaged Dresden or the little nameless, ransacked villages along Stephano’s long homeward trek to the Mediterranean. No Hallmark Card version of anything here.The tale of these people moves from the present, in May just when the war is officially over in Europe, through the spring and summer, to the 1930s where bits of their stories are introduced, logically, sparingly, and with purpose. A judicious use, I think, of the principle that “if you don’t know where you’ve been, how can you know where you’re going?”The writing is lyrical, and suits itself to particular scenes or portions of scenes—complex sentences with descriptive words (but never too many!); short, staccato bursts like gunfire when the tension ratchets up; reflective musings to show us the psyches of the characters. I read this prose with pure enjoyment, with nary a stumble. The plot as well unfolds with its switchbacks in a seamless flow, from the individual vignettes with their disparate backstories to the meshing of them all along the way. Not many writers can pull this off so successfully. And not many writers manage to neatly sidestep the usual inane tropes that are generally the bulwarks of present WWII historical fiction.There is war here, and the memory of war, brutality, hate, and suspicion, reluctance, distrust, and love. All in the proper measure and none of it contrived or forced. Horror and despair at the beginning are slowly, painfully, assuaged by basic human feelings that may often be beaten but not entirely broken.I recommend this one highly, and note that, because of my often too-critical tastes, I’m going to have a difficult time finding something else this fine.Too many POVs and time jumps I liked the general premise of the story; the misery and complexity of life during and after WWII in Germany and Italy. But I struggled to finish this book.The plot starts in 1945 when Italian soldier traveling through war devastated Germany meets an orphaned boy. They take a night shelter in an abandoned house by the river. Present and former German occupants of this house are the other main protagonists. There is a big mystery covering their past that reader is eager to see unveiled. The past of little boy and Italian soldier are also not known. It was a very interesting beginning to a great story. All the questions are answered and all loose ends nicely wrapped up at the very satisfactory ending but I did not like the way the rest of the tale was told.The story is delivered in short chapters that are told from different points of view of multiple protagonists and constantly jump in time from past to present. It feels almost as author could not decide if she is writing a suspense book or a great historical novel about atrocities of war. The action was often too slow to make it a good suspense. On the other hand, every time I started submerging myself in individual life stories or dramatic war events I was jerked out and transferred to different timeframe or a different person in the next chapter. As a result I appreciated some fragments but the book did not pull me in the way I hoped it will.Bottom line: The story itself is very good but I would enjoy it more if it was told differently. In my opinion, by comparison with other WWII books, this one is just 3 starsCourageous human spirit in the aftermath of devastating events leads to questionable actions. “The Road Beyond Ruin” is a larger than life historical novel. I found it a bit difficult in the beginning due to the format. Each chapter is designated to a lead character and skips back within 10-15 years to provide backstory. It’s clearly marked but still a bit jarring as it happens every few pages. It took 6-8 chapters to get the hang of it. One of the characters writes letters to her dad that were sometimes lentghty and in script text.This story is character and dialogue driven, which is a wonderful thing. With so much detail given about each character, you will know them intimately and the dialogue is quick moving, (except for the clunky Russo/English), that the 400+ pages flow swiftly along. The prose is fine, but minimal for a book of this length. There is a minimal amount of suggestive content with no gratuitous language or violence. All of the scenes earning this book it’s PG-13 rating are mildly descriptive at best. The emotions and tension of each character are intense and resonate loudly.The war has ended and these folks are trying to put their lives back together. Who should they trust? Can they trust each other? Why are they in this town when clearly they belong elsewhere? Are you who you say you are? Did you do this or not? So many questions how do we find the truth? Curiosity, kindness and cold blooded conjuring; these are the essence of taking “The Road Beyond Ruin”.