I’m thrilled to announce the publication of my fourteenth novel, Berlin and Betrayal, A Tangled Roots Historical Mystery. It’s a WWII story and a Pandemic story, rolled into one. The Kindle version went live last night and the paperback version went live this morning on Amazon.

In this gripping and emotional World War II genealogical mystery, the third in the Tangled Roots series, Lucas Landry deepens his search for answers about his ancestry by moving his family to Munich, Germany for a year.

In February 2020, Lucas Landry’s burning desire to bring his large German family together for a family reunion uproots him, his wife, and kids from California and moves them to Germany for a year. Unfortunately, coincident with their arrival and start of new jobs, a worldwide pandemic occurs, throwing the world and Lucas’s plans into chaos. With his oldest WWII-surviving relatives in their 80’s and 90’s being most vulnerable to the disease, Lucas fears a reunion might be impossible.

While Lucas tries to adjust to a pandemic world and protect his immediate family, he keeps busy further delving into his family’s German roots. Thinking being in Germany will at least make his research easier, he’s in for a surprise. Many Germans want to forget the past, having lived under a cloud of guilt over their ancestors’ mistakes. Key relatives want Lucas to just leave it alone. But he doggedly continues digging.

In February 1945, Germany’s defeat in WWII is inevitable and ethnic Germans, including Jette Nagel, her Nazi son, and his family, are being chased out of their homes in the German controlled Sudetenland by the Red Army. Dresden, the home of Jette’s closest family, is bombed to shambles by the Allies.

Berlin and Betrayal is a historical genealogical mystery with a dual-timeline. It’s a story about guilt, betrayal, tragedy, and forgiveness.

For me, this book was difficult to write, because the Pandemic was in full swing when I started working on it and some people told me I should leave it out, that people weren’t ready to read about it yet. In allowing some time to pass before I finished writing, I hope people will be more receptive to reading it and will find their own fears reflected in the characters. It was was also really interesting for me, because I set the modern-day portion of the book in Munich, Germany (where my son lives) during the earliest days of the Pandemic. My son helped me with some of the details of what it was like in Germany back then.

I felt that it was necessary to include the Pandemic, as it will become another major part of the world’s history, as WWII did. Combining the two actually worked extremely well and showed some similarities, in a way.

Getting back to the news about the publication, I usually list the paperback version for $14.99, but this time I’ve decided to list for an introductory price of only $12.99. The Kindle version is $5.79, considerably lower price than many of the books in the same genre. I hope you’ll get your copy and tell your friends about it. If you have a subscription to Kindle Unlimited, you can read the book (and all my other books, too) for free.

https://www.amazon.com/Berlin-Betrayal-Susan-Finlay-ebook/dp/B09CB93V9X