A "haunting . . . searing and honest" (People) family saga inspired by Maria Hummel's own extended family and their status as Mitl ufer, Germans who "went along" with Nazism, reaping its benefits and later paying the consequences. Inspired by the stories told by her father about his German childhood and letters between her grandparents that were hidden in an attic wall for fifty years, Motherland is a novel that attempts...