The Burgdorf Cycle Boxed Set by Ursula Hegi brings together her four novels set in Burgdorf, Germany that explore the consequences of Hitler’s reign and the ramifications of World War II.

OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • From the acclaimed author of The Worst Thing I've Done and Children and Fire, a stunning story about ordinary people living in extraordinary times—“epic, daring, magnificent, the product of a defining and mesmerizing vision” (Los Angeles Times).Trudi Montag is a Zwerg—a woman with dwarfism—short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyone who has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she lear...

Three mothers are brought together through tragedy and rebirth in this "deeply compassionate . . . surprisingly sunlit tale" set in nineteenth century Germany ( The Washington Post).In the summer of 1878, the Ludwig Zirkus arrives on Nordstrand in Germany, to the delight of the island's people. But after the show, a Hundred-Year Wave roars from the Nordsee and claims three young children.Three mothers are on the beach when it happens: Lotte, whose ch...

Floating in My Mother's Palm is the compelling and mystical story of Hanna Malter, a young girl growing up in 1950's Burgdorf, the small German town Ursula Hegi so brilliantly brought to life in her bestselling novel Stones from the River.Hanna's courageous voice evokes her unconventional mother, who swims during thunderstorms; the illegitimate son of an American GI, who learns from Hanna about his father; and the librarian, Trudi Montag, who lets...

The fourth novel in Ursula Hegi’s acclaimed Burgdorf cycle is “a thoughtful, sidelong approach to the worst moment in Germany’s history that invites us to understand how decent people come to collaborate with evil” (Kirkus Reviews).Children and Fire tells the story of one day that will forever transform the lives of the people in Burgdorf, Germany, the fictitious village by the river in Ursula Hegi’s bestselling novels. February 27, 1934—the first...

The bestselling author of Stones from the River delivers her most ambitious and dramatic novel yet -- the unforgettable story of an endearing, but also flawed, Italian American family.In December 1953 Anthony Amedeo's world is nested in his Bronx neighborhood, his parents' Studebaker, the Paradise Theater, Yankee Stadium -- and in his imagination, where he longs for a stencil kit to decorate the windows like all the other kids on his street. Instead he gets...

From the author of Stones from the River comes an intimate and dangerous story of three friends that goad one another into crossing a line that brings them shocking consequences.Since early childhood, Annie, Jake, and Mason have had a special bond. When Annie's parents die on the same night that she and Mason are married, the three friends decide to raise Annie's newborn sister, Opal, together.Annie struggles to be both a sister and a mother to Opa...

Salt Dancers is at once a brilliant portrait of anAmerican family, a story of the secrets familiesguard, and a moving account of one woman'sjourney back to a past filled with elusive memoriesand suppressed rage. Why did Julia's motherdisappear one day without so much as a word? How dida loving father who taught her such a beautiful thingas the salt dance become such a terrifying and abusivepresence? These are...

The bestselling author of Stones from the River and The Vision of Emma Blau renews her reputation as an extraordinary writer of short stories in this major collection that balances her reader on the magical border of laughter and sorrow.In Hotel of the Saints, Hegi enters the perspectives of lovers and loners, eccentrics and artists, children and parents: a musician tries to protect her daughter from loving a blind man; a seminary student yearns for the c...

Ursula Hegi returns with a luminous epic of a bicultural family filled with passion and aspirations, tragedy, and redemption.At the beginning of the twentieth century, Stefan Blau, whom readers will remember from Stones from the River, flees Burgdorf, a small town in Germany, and comes to America in search of the vision he has dreamed of every night.The novel closes nearly a century later with Stefan’s granddaughter, Emma, and the legacy of his dre...

Brilliantly stretching literary conventions, Ursula Hegi, author of the best-selling Stones from the River, creates a funny and original novel within a novel to explore the doubts, decisions, and "might-have-beens" that mark not only the writing process but life itself. As her "author" and her fictional heroine deal with their intrusions into each other's lives, Hegi reveals much about the choices women make, the ambiguities they face, and the often surprising ways reality and fic...

Ursula Hegi grew up in Germany and moved to the United States at age eighteen. As she grew older and raised a family, questions about her roots and her native land haunted her until, at last, she felt compelled to write about them. Tearing the Silence brings together her interviews with dozens of German-born Americans, and their confrontations with the taboo of the Holocaust.