Life Without You
Date
2016-01-07
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MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa
Abstract
War ravages through Europe in the early 1940’s as young German couple, Gottlieb and
Herzeliede, struggle to learn who they are together and apart.
After Gottlieb, an enlisted soldier, is captured by Allied forces he is sent to what he
considers Hell on Earth, Tabor, Iowa. A prisoner of war, Gottlieb learns for himself who the real enemy is in the war while working with local farmers. Braving the fickle Iowa elements,
Gottlieb’s work on the Iowa farms proves to be his only reprieve from the world around him as he learns of deaths he couldn’t stop, infidelity, and skewed views of reality.
Meanwhile, Herzeliede’s life in Wutach with her parents never feels whole while
Gottlieb is away. With only letters to communicate, she feels cut off from the world and helpless. When her parents send her to live with her Aunt Ana, a nurse in Munich, she learns how good her life really was in the German countryside. In the city with Ana by her side, Herzeliede struggles to deal with her long distance relationship, angry superiors, and continual overnight bombings which become part of her everyday life. She also discovers who she really wants to be with Gottlieb and without.
Circumstances may keep them apart physically, but it is their attitudes that keep them apart emotionally in Life Without You.
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Keywords
Novel, WWII, Iowa, Germany