Transfer Day
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
An exciting spy thriller in the tradition of The Key to Rebecca and Hornet Flight. TRANSFER DAY is an action-packed clean and wholesome romantic adventure that brings to life a fading West Indian sugar colony in the last days of Danish rule.
"A page-turner with emotional resonance." –Publishers Weekly
St. Thomas, 1916: When Abigail Maduro's parents are killed in an accident along the Panama Canal, she is sent to St. Thomas, an island in the Danish West Indies, to live with her bad-tempered aunt and her household of eccentric servants. Times are hard for the islanders as the threat of German submarines has dried up shipping and trade. Despite the island's veneer of tranquility, St. Thomas is a hotbed of German spies and saboteurs who use their Hamburg-America Line steamers to aid the Kaiser's war effort When a mysterious stranger appears in town, Abigail is drawn into the conflict. In the scholarly Erich Seibold, she finds the friendship and love she has been craving, even after she learns that Erich is really a deserter from a U-boat. But their idyllic interlude comes to a crashing halt when the island's German consul discovers Erich's identity and blackmails him into committing sabotage and murder. When Erich is thrown into prison, Abigail must choose between her safety and Erich's life. Can she save Erich from certain doom as an accused German spy? Can she bring down a German spy ring before they launch an invasion against the island? Will the islands get transferred to the Americans or will the Kaiser claim them for the Fatherland?
TRANSFER DAY will beguile readers with its rendering of ordinary people whose lives are torn apart by war, and the endurance of hope and love against all odds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 1917 transfer of the Danish West Indies to the United States, which forestalled imperial Germany's hopes to control strategically valuable ports during WWI, provides the background for Schiller's engaging historical thriller. In 2001, journalist S ren Jensen, still grieving over the loss of his wife, travels from Copenhagen to the Virgin Islands to investigate a report that documents exist supporting the claim of Abigail Maduro to have "personally thwarted a German invasion" of the islands. Abigail recently died at the age of 101, and S ren meets her granddaughter, Claire Lehman, a possible new love interest (Claire's eyes have "an inner fire, a boldness that resonated deep within him"). Claire gives S ren access to her ancestor's diary, which details the teenage Abigail's growth into self-sufficiency and her role in countering German espionage before the sale of the islands. Schiller deftly blends fact and fiction in a page-turner with emotional resonance. (BookLife)
