In this multilayered historical novel that explores family secrets and hidden identities, “Woods skillfully captures the disorienting mixture of heady freedom and mounting fear characterizing 1930s Berlin, and the political and gender issues she raises add contemporary relevancy” (Publishers Weekly). Berlin, 1931: Sisters raised in a Catholic orphanage, Berni and Grete Metzger are each other's whole world. That is, until life propels them to opposite sides of seedy, splendid, and violent Weimar Berlin. Berni becomes a cigarette girl, a denizen of the cabaret scene alongside her transgender best friend, who is considering a risky gender reassignment surgery. Meanwhile Grete is hired as a maid to a Nazi family, and begins to form a complicated bond with their son. As Germany barrels toward the Third Reich and ruin, one of the sisters must make a devastating choice. South Carolina, 1970: With the recent death of her father, Janeen Moore yearns to know more about her family history, especially the closely guarded story of her mother's youth in Germany. One day she intercepts a letter intended for her mother: a confession written by a German woman, a plea for forgiveness. What role does Janeen's mother play in this story, and why does she seem so distressed by recent news that a former SS officer has resurfaced in America? Fräulein M. abounds with hidden identities and family secrets. With its multilayered exploration of family ties, hard choices, and the weight of history in our lives, the novel shines light on a brilliant new voice.

In this multilayered historical novel that explores family secrets and hidden identities, “Woods skillfully captures the disorienting mixture of heady freedom and mounting fear characterizing 1930s Berlin, and the political and gender issues she raises add contemporary relevancy” (Publishers Weekly). Berlin, 1931: Sisters raised in a Catholic orphanage, Berni and Grete Metzger are each other's whole world. That is, until life propels them to opposite sides of seedy, splendid, and violent Weimar Berlin. Berni becomes a cigarette girl, a denizen of the cabaret scene alongside her transgender best friend, who is considering a risky gender reassignment surgery. Meanwhile Grete is hired as a maid to a Nazi family, and begins to form a complicated bond with their son. As Germany barrels toward the Third Reich and ruin, one of the sisters must make a devastating choice. South Carolina, 1970: With the recent death of her father, Janeen Moore yearns to know more about her family history, especially the closely guarded story of her mother's youth in Germany. One day she intercepts a letter intended for her mother: a confession written by a German woman, a plea for forgiveness. What role does Janeen's mother play in this story, and why does she seem so distressed by recent news that a former SS officer has resurfaced in America? Fräulein M. abounds with hidden identities and family secrets. With its multilayered exploration of family ties, hard choices, and the weight of history in our lives, the novel shines light on a brilliant new voice.

After Expressionism had run its feverish course, its foremost exponent Georg Kaiser (1878-1945) ‑‑ The Burghers of Calais, From Morn to Midnight, Gas ‑‑ proved equally adept at the lighter fare demanded by post-war audiences. Of some nine hundred comedies premièred in the Weimar era, his Pulp Fiction was an early triumph, often revived and played now as parody of a contagious literary genre, now as critique of Old World pieties. The New Woman emerged even more clearly towards the end of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ in Clairvoyance ‑‑ though now also as antagonist, from whose vampish sophistication the loving wife emancipates both self and wayward husband. Between these two comedies, in One Day in October (acclaimed especially in Gustav Gründgens’s gripping production) focus shifts to psychological wrestling in deadly earnest over the parentage of a child. A parallel dilemma underlies the compelling plot, rising tension and searing climax of Agnete ‑‑ an uncanny precursor of the ‘Heimkehrer’ literature inspired by soldiers and captives returning home after 1945. This was indeed a fitting play to mark the rebirth of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949. Kaiser had died in exile, though not before taking leave, like Prospero, with another wry comedy, The Gordian Egg.