The Morning after the Rain

Johanna loves her job. Working for the United Nations, she travels the world on humanitarian missions to bring desperately needed aid to the victims of war, persecution, and famine. But each time she returns to New York, yearning to be with her family, she feels like a stranger among them. Her husband Ralph and daughter Elsa believe Johanna cares more for people on the other side of the world than for her own family and have learned to manage their daily lives without her.

Decades later, Johanna inherits her Aunt Toni's house in Sankt Goar, a little town on the River Rhine in Germany where she and Elsa spent their summers growing up, and which has exerted a special pull on her ever since. Shortly after Johanna moves into her new home, Elsa, who has become a successful lawyer at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, unexpectedly turns up on her doorstep. Burned out from her job, Elsa decides to recover at Aunt Toni’s house, despite her frosty relationship with her mother. Gradually, Elsa realises that she has more in common with her mother than she thought. Until Johanna reveals a secret from the past that nearly destroyed both her and her family…

A moving novel about a woman torn between her passion for her career and her desire to care for her family, about deep-seated pain, guilt, and long-awaited reconciliations – against the backdrop of fascinating international settings.
 

»A gripping family portrait that examines the unshakeable bonds of love and past secrets, subtly profound and emotionally powerful.« Katharina Fuchs, author