Matt Peller

Never Go Home Matt Peller

Nazi fighter planes roar overhead as just-married Konrad and Magdalena Butscher exit the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in southern Hungary. To evade the draft, they soon flee to live with family at the Danube River border.

Everyone passes through his parents' inn: Nazi relatives, communist guerillas, smugglers of stolen weapons, identity forgers, Serbians, Croatians, Romanians, Gypsies, Jews. Konrad struggles to separate the factions while he exchanges and conceals multiple currencies. Should he remain with his stubborn parents? Or escape to a safer future with his wife and baby? As Konrad agonizes, the Germans invade Hungary, and the Allies counterattack. Who will stay, who will run, and where can they go? The Iron Curtain descends, and who will stand on which side? Even the "peace" is violent amid post-war reprisals against ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe. From Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Konrad's extended family is engulfed and torn apart.

While family members see evil, few resist. What is the responsibility of a witness to evil? Are we hard-wired to protect the members of our own tribe at the expense of others? How many compromises will Konrad make before fate finds him? Readers may not agree with everyone's choices, but will appreciate their determination to survive.