Cover Crush: Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker by Gregory Maguire

Hello, my name is Colleen and I am a cover slut. I know, I know....you aren't supposed to judge a book by it's cover. I just can't help myself! A beautiful cover draws my eye every single time and I can't help but pick up the book it's dressing and see if the inside seems as intriguing as the outside. Sometimes it does, and sometimes a pretty cover is just a pretty cover. Either way, I love getting an eyeful!

One of my favorite bloggers, Erin at Flashlight Commentary, created a weekly blog post called Cover Crush and she and some other blogger friends are sharing their favorite covers each Thursday. I've decided to join in this year and will link to their posts down below.

So, without further ado, my Cover Crush this week is.....

 

 

 

 

I absolutely LOVE the texture in this cover! Doesn't it feel like you could reach right in and pop out the nut?  And the rest of the picture - the trees, the ax, the bird, and the mouse king - all seem intricately carved out of marble or something similar. Add to that the stylized writing and that beautiful blue background and the entire image is simply stunning.

 

Let's read the synopsis to what we can learn about the story within....

 

In this imaginative novel rooted in the rich soil of early-nineteenth-century German Romanticism, beloved New York Times bestselling author Gregory Maguire twins an origin legend of the famous Nutcracker with the life of Drosselmeier, the toymaker who carves him

Gregory Maguire’s novels have been called “bewitching,” “remarkable,” “extraordinary,” “engrossing,” “amazing,” and “delicious.” Having brought his legions of devoted readers to Oz in Wicked, Wonderland in After Alice and Dickensian London in Lost, Maguire now takes us to the Black Forest of Bavaria and Munich of the Brothers Grimm and E. T. A. Hoffman. Hiddensee recreates the backstory of the Nutcracker, reimaging how this entrancing creature came to be carved and how it magically guided an ailing little girl named Klara through a dreamy paradise on a snowy Christmas Eve. It also brings to life the mysterious godfather Drosselmeier—the ominous, canny, one-eyed toymaker made immortal by Petipa and Tchaikovsky’s ballet—who presents the once and future Nutcracker to Klara, his goddaughter.

But Hiddensee is not just a retelling of a classic story. Maguire discovers in the flowering of German Romanticism a migrating strain of a Hellenic mystery-cult, and ponders a profound question: how a person who is abused by life, short-changed and challenged, can access secrets that benefit the disadvantaged and powerless. Ultimately, Hiddensee, offers a message of hope. If the compromised Godfather Drosselmeier can bring an enchanted Nutcracker to a young girl in distress, perhaps everyone, however lonely or marginalized on the eve of a winter holiday, has something precious to share.

 

 

Don't forget to check out what covers my blogger buddies are drooling over this week (updated as they become available):


Magdalena at A Bookaholic Swede
Meghan at Of Quills & Vellum
Erin at Flashlight Commentary
Heather at The Maiden's Court
Stephanie at Layered Pages
Holly at 2 Kids and Tired



Created by Magdalena of A Bookaholic Swede

 

 

 

Guest Post by Phyllis Edgerly Ring, Author of The Munich Girl

Please join me in welcoming Phyllis Edgerly Ring, author of The Munich Girl, to the blog today! She has a fascinating guest post for us on the meaning behind The Munich Girl and how Eva Braun plays into that meaning. I really hope you enjoy it as much as I have, and be sure to continue after for more information about the book!

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“They called her ‘stupid cow’, though she was smart enough to capture the man she loved when everyone—he, most of all—said he’d never marry.

Considered insignificant by those around Hitler, she was one of the Third Reich’s best-kept secrets and filmed the private lives of many notorious Nazis.

Eva Braun paid a big price for the name ‘Hitler’. And in the end, it was hers only for a day, and now, no one ever calls her ‘Eva Hitler’. 

Her life with the Führer mirrors Germany’s: He first seduced, then neglected and abandoned them. Finally, he led them into the jaws of destruction.”

With these words, Anna Dahlberg begins an exploration of the life of Hitler’s infamous mistress, and of her friendship with Anna’s mother, in my novel, The Munich Girl.

Seventy-one years ago this month, Eva Braun’s world, and life, were coming to their end as Germany succumbed to defeat and ruin. From a bunker under Berlin, the 33-year-old, who had spent nearly half her life with Hitler, wrote her final letters to her younger sister, Gretl, and longtime friend, Herta. She writes of preparing to die (she would commit suicide alongside Hitler eight days later), and her bewilderment at how things were ending; about dreams she’d long held, which weren’t ever going to come true.

On this same day, she chose an action whose significance would only be revealed later, during the war crimes trials in Nuremberg. In testimony there, a high-ranking German officer credited her with ensuring that one of Hitler’s last desperate orders had come to him, on April 22, rather than to someone who would actually carry them out.


As a result, the lives of about 35,000 Allied prisoners of war were saved. That’s a whole town’s worth of people who were the loved ones of many tens of thousands of others. Among them were two relatives of my own, one of whom had been a prisoner in both world wars (and, curiously, was one of the happiest people I’ve known.) Years ago, after he’d died, I had a dream in which he spoke the words “moral courage” to me. This was the very first thing I thought of when I learned, decades later, that Eva Braun’s decision in that Berlin bunker may have been the reason he survived.

The story of The Munich Girl is about many things, including, of course, Eva Braun and history from the time of the war in Germany. It is also about the power of friendship, and the importance of our often ignored and overlooked inner life, without which our world careens increasingly out-of-balance.

At its heart, it is a story about outlasting that chaos and confusion by valuing, and believing in, the ultimate triumph of all of the good that we are willing to contribute to building, together. Part of our ability to do that, I’ve come to believe, rests in being able to recognize that human beings aren’t usually all good, or all bad, but a complex mix of where our experience, understanding, and choices have led us.

As a result, The Munich Girl is about two things that matter a great deal to my heart: the experience of reunion with and “coming home to” our truest self, and the role that others play in that process, often in highly mysterious and unexpected ways. 

 

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

Publication Date: November 14th, 2015

Publisher: Whole Sky Books

Pages: 356

 

 

Anna Dahlberg grew up eating dinner under her father’s war-trophy portrait of Eva Braun. Fifty years after the war, she discovers what he never did—that her mother and Hitler’s mistress were friends. The secret surfaces with a mysterious monogrammed handkerchief, and a man, Hannes Ritter, whose Third Reich family history is entwined with Anna’s. Plunged into the world of the “ordinary” Munich girl who was her mother’s confidante—and a tyrant’s lover—Anna finds her every belief about right and wrong challenged. With Hannes’s help, she retraces the path of two women who met as teenagers, shared a friendship that spanned the years that Eva Braun was Hitler’s mistress, yet never knew that the men they loved had opposing ambitions. Eva’s story reveals that she never joined the Nazi party, had Jewish friends, and was credited at the Nuremberg Trials with saving 35,000 Allied lives. As Anna's journey leads back through the treacherous years in wartime Germany, it uncovers long-buried secrets and unknown reaches of her heart to reveal the enduring power of love in the legacies that always outlast war.

 

 

Buy the Book
 

Amazon

 

 

About the Author

 

 

As a child in Germany, and when she returned to visit as an adult, Phyllis Edgerly Ring heard little about the years of the Second World War -- mostly just “thank God it’s behind us.” Yet, similar to characters in The Munich Girl, some of the kindest, most morally courageous people she knew wereLife at First Sight: Finding the Divine in the Details. She is also a co-author of With Thine Own Eyes: Why Imitate the Past, When We Can Investigate Reality? She lives in New Hampshire.

those who never wanted the war, or National Socialism, and found creative ways to outlast it and to help others as they did. The meaningful example in their lives applies more than ever in our world, she feels, and offers spiritual gifts and lessons we’ve barely begun to uncover. The author has studied plant sciences, worked as a nurse, taught English to kindergartners in China, and been an editor and contributing writer for a variety of publications. She is the author of two novels and the inspirational nonfiction

You can learn more about Phyllis on her blog and Amazon author page, and can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.