by GeniustoBurn

Created on: October 08, 2010   Last Updated: October 10, 2010

Vienna Prelude is the first in a series of books set in Europe on the eve of World War II. My mum has been urging me to try them for about the last 15 years, and now I've started, I wonder what took me so long....

The book opens in 1972 - a young musician happens across a genuine Guarnerius violin. The shopkeeper tells her it was found in an attic of a house in Eastern Europe - and nobody knows how it got there....

And thus we begin the flashback to 1936. Elisa is a violinist in the Vienna Symphony Orchestra with her best friend Leah. Trouble is already brewing, for Leah is banned from playing in Germany, because she is Jewish. Elisa is also half Jewish, but she works under a stage name and has so far remained undetected.

Elisa's father (Theo) can feel the political situation heating up and decides the family needs to leave Berlin for a "holiday" in Austria - with Czechoslovakian passports rather than their German ones. It seems they are not quite in time to escape the growing danger - as a well known Jew, Theo is detained by the Gestapo. Elisa has already suffered the heartbreak of being dumped by her soldier boyfriend Thomas - whose career would be over if he carried on associating with a half Jewish girl. How will she cope with the fact that her homeland has become a danger zone and her family has been devastated?

Luckily a nice young American is on hand to be heroic and help her when she is left to cope alone. John Murphy is a journalist who is one of the few who can see the danger in this Hitler chap being given so much power. He and Elisa keep bumping into each other and form a friendship, complicated by the fact that she still loves Thomas, and her friends are encouraging her to marry Murphy for the privileges an American passport could afford her.

There are some nail biting scenes, like Theo doing his best to escape from the bad guys. The tension rises as characters struggle to communicate discreetly enough to pass Nazi surveillance without suspicion. Meanwhile, Elisa's mother and two brothers remain in Austria - but can they trust the family they are staying with?

When Elisa finds out her father is not all he seems, she begins to take a more active view of the war - rather than just taking care of herself and her family, she wishes to become part of the resistance and help the millions of Jews who are trapped within Nazi borders. A career in smuggling false passports beckons - and her little Guarnerius violin case is the mode of transportation

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