Broken Ground

By: Kai Maristed

Narrated by: Johanna Ward

Kaethe Shalk has married into a family of disappearing German aristocracy. Having spent years in East Berlin, she faces a new life of boundless complexity when the Berlin Wall comes down and the ruin of the East stands in stark contrast to the exuberance of the West.

Kaethe's journey from America to the broken ground of contemporary Germany becomes an act of recovery: of the lives intertwined by politics and passion, of memory and the invented self, and of Kaethe's search for a daughter lost to her, now grown and living in uncompromising isolation from her mother's past and present, somewhere in vast, resurgent Berlin.

©2003 Kai Maristed

Critic reviews

"The prose is stupendous as Maristed's entangled layers of plot allow a look at modern Berlin through the eyes of its turbulent past." (Booklist)

Broken Story

Save your credit for something better. This tedious story is told from shifting times, so I kept feeling lost and disinterested. I could not identify with any of the characters, or even like them. I was so happy to finally reach the ending so I could try something else. The reader is my favorite which is why I chose the book.