Blackout

One life, one century. Sixty-five years after the bombing of Dresden and twenty years after the unification of Germany, Angela Thompson paints a vivid and passionate picture of her mother, Elfriede Richter (1920-1999), in her book "Blackout: A Woman's Struggle for Survival in Twentieth Century Germany." She captures the reader from the very first page as the story of her family's fight for survival unfolds after Hitler's rise to power, followed by World War II, the catastrophic bombing of Dresden, the emergence of two German states and the family's eventual escape to West Germany before the building of the Berlin Wall. In her search for understanding and universal truths, Angela Thompson presents a hauntingly personal insight into the heroic struggles of a woman who not only fights for survival but strives for dignity in her married life and the slowly emerging new German society after World War II.