Excerpt from Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

That was before Lisa fell ill last winter. These days, Johanna was concerned solely with utility, so much so that she only grew vegetables and herbs in her garden, explaining that flowers served no purpose. "It's foolish to waste fertile soil for something that won't be put to good use," Johanna had recently told Hilde as she pulled a bulb from her garlic bed.

* * *

Hilde turned the crystal knob on her bedroom door and reminded herself to relax her shoulders and release the breath she'd been holding. As her eyes found Lisa's bed, Hilde dug her fingernails into her palm, a habit that had become a ritual offering. Of course, Hilde knew there was no actual benefit in forcing herself to focus on Lisa's rag doll resting on her pillow or cutting into her own flesh. Still, it was a sting of pain that she could control, gathering it into one place, like sweeping a mess from the kitchen floor into a tidy pile.

On Hilde's bed was her uniform for the BDM Werk Glaube und Schönheit, Faith and Beauty Society, a branch of the Hitler Youth for older German girls. She tightened her black neckerchief against her crisp short-­sleeved white shirt and tucked the hem into her skirt.

Hilde looked at herself in the full-­length standing mirror. She pushed out her chest slightly and checked her profile, hoping curves had developed since she'd last checked. Of course this was unlikely, since her last inspection was that morning. Practically all the other girls in Hilde's class had figures like Coca-­Cola bottles; hers looked like a can of evaporated milk. The unfairness of life was maddening.

Hilde decided not to wear her boxy brown jacket. She looked masculine enough without adding the Kletterweste to the ensemble. Hilde remembered when Jutta had sported a similar jacket. She had looked as stylish as Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus.

Stop! Hilde scolded herself, trying instead to focus on the gifts she did possess. She smiled into the mirror, a closed-­mouth grin that her mother had told her looked cheerful. She trotted down the staircase and joined her mother in the kitchen.

* * *

"Guten Abend!" Franz's deep voice rang through the front door. Another man was with him, one with the vocal resonance of someone her father's age. Hilde hoped she would soon hear the man's son. It was far too soon to be considering old men.

In the kitchen, Johanna smiled with nervous excitement and handed Hilde her wooden spoon. With the nod of her chin, she instructed her daughter to take over at the stove. Hilde knew to keep stirring to keep the meat from burning and gravy from bubbling over. Johanna ordered Hilde to place sour cream in a small porcelain bowl and take the dumplings out of the boiling water in exactly two minutes. "Tonight is very important for your father. We need you on your very best behavior," she instructed before heading toward the front of the house.

Three adult voices hailed Hitler before softening their tone. "Guten Abend, die Herren," Johanna sang with a flutter. Hilde figured she must have misheard her father when he introduced Johanna to Obergruppenführer Werner Ziegler, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler's right-­hand man. But when her mother told their guest that it was an honor to have him in their home, it confirmed that Hilde had heard correctly.

Why is Obergruppenführer Werner Ziegler in our home?

Thanks to Hilde's keen eavesdropping, she knew that although her father was an SS officer, he wasn't particularly well regarded by the party. She'd heard her parents whispering behind closed doors that Franz had recently made a particularly costly mistake, placing his trust in an unreliable informant. No one suspected Franz of being disloyal, simply foolish, but that was only slightly better.

Hilde's father was not the sort of officer one would imagine deserving any attention from Werner Ziegler.

Excerpted from Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn. Copyright © 2022 by Jennifer Coburn. Excerpted by permission of Sourcebooks. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.