Synopsis
From the bestselling author of The Murmur of Bees comes a transportive novel of two families uprooted by war and united by the bonds of love and courage.
With war looming dangerously close, Ilse’s school days soon turn to lessons of survival. In the harshness of winter, her family must join the largest exodus in human history to survive. As battle lines are drawn and East Prussia’s borders vanish beneath them, they leave their farm and all they know behind for an uncertain future.
But Ilse also has Janusz, her family’s young Polish laborer, by her side. As they flee from the Soviet army, his enchanting folktales keep her mind off the cold, the hunger, and the horrors unfolding around them. He tells her of a besieged kingdom in the Baltic Sea from which spill the amber tears of a heartbroken queen.
Neither of them realizes his stories will prove crucial and prophetic.
Not far away, trying and failing to flee from a vengeful army, Arno and his mother hide in the ruins of a Königsberg mansion, hoping that once the war ends they can reunite their dispersed family. But their stay in the walled city proves untenable when they find themselves dodging bombs and scavenging in the rubble. Soon they’ll become pawns caught between two powerful enemies, on a journey with an unknown destination.
Hope carries these children caught in the crosshairs of war on an extraordinary pilgrimage in which the gift of an amber teardrop is at once a valuable form of currency and a symbol of resilience, one that draws them together against insurmountable odds.
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Praise
” Although a fictional story, it’s based on actual events related to the author by two survivors of the bombing and occupation of Prussia during World War II…Segovia’s vivid descriptions of how refugees do whatever necessary to survive compels readers to be sympathetic with human struggles, rather than simply taking sides in a conflict. This story demonstrates the staggering toll war takes, especially on women, left to carry on.” — Authorlink
“Segovia likes to capture ‘the spirit of an era and a people,’ focusing on those who ‘don’t feature in the history books.’ In TEARS OF AMBER, her two main characters are children who have no control over the political issues of their era, yet find themselves struggling to survive in wartime…an engaging historical novel which enlightens readers while entertaining them” — Compulsive Reader
“Segovia’s prose is at an extraordinary moment for the precision in detail, the pious look at human nature, as well as for her ability to start, without distractors, great and endearing narratives in which passages and characters, despite being numerous and meriting development, do not blur or detract from each other, much less from the central characters, the children…Peregrinos is the best novel so far this year and its author is in a time of undoubted maturity.” – Hojeando / El Norte
“This is a story told by a German friend to Sofía Segovia whose family settled in Monterrey, Mexico, but this author’s expertise transformed it into a post-memory novel that must be read because it makes us reflect on the consequences of the Second World War.” – Daniel Torres, Ohio University
“One of my favorite novels of the year! A story that is as shocking as it is moving, in which courage, resilience and love fill us with hope.” – El Librero de Valentina
“Segovia starts from unique and endearing characters and crucial conflicts (..) to pose allegories about the most valuable qualities of humanity. Peregrinos continues with the thread that the author follows in her career path: the stories of survival that remind us that history is not in the official books but in the real legacy of those who live it. Perhaps a novel like this one by Sofía Segovia was never so relevant and important to make us question our position on the reality of present-day migrants, refugees, pilgrims all.” – Gaceta 22
“A story to read slowly, with phrases that bristle and reach deep inside. A common history of a common family who as many others, was left scarred, depleted, broken….[Peregrinos] does not refer to the life of those who organize war, nor to those who benefit from it, it tells of the life of the common citizen, the innocent, the boy, the girl, the wife, the father, the neighbor. What I liked the most is the ending… it is one that stays with you, makes you aware.” – Tote Cabana
Excerpt
Chapter 24 Lost
January 1942
Karl Schipper was lost in pain.
He wouldn’t remember it later, but in the haze of his confused mind, in that silence that smelled of gunpowder, at first, he believed he was lost in death. He felt a moment of sorrow for his wife and his children. So many fatherless children. His would just be a few more in this new world of orphans. Then, he remembered the promise that his fatherland had made: in the new Germany, no family would be abandoned, no child left without food or education.
He could go reassured, then, he thought. If he could open his eyes. If he could rise, leave his body’s weight behind, he’d go. He hadn’t yet reached the level of consciousness necessary to ask himself, why do I need strength to go to the eternal life? Why do I need sight? Isn’t it supposed to be easy?
He’d barely had time to think, thank God it’s over, that the bullets have stopped flying, that life no longer reeks of dead flesh, that my hands will never again hold a rifle, that my body will never again know cold, when he became suddenly aware of his body—frozen eyelashes under a makeshift mask, breathless, motionless, lying faceup in the middle of the forest.
There were voices around him, and, more than anything else, it was they that anchored him to life. German voices.
“This one’s breathing!” said a voice above him.
Karl was happy for the man who’d be going home, who’d see his children again. What he’d give to be able to see his own! But when he felt hands lifting his body, covering it with a blanket, he understood that the voice was referring to him, the only survivor of that massacre in the forest.
As the anesthetic of ice wore off beneath the blanket, Karl’s body began to convulse with shivers. As he was transported first on a stretcher and then in a truck, the living monster named pain arrived, a monster that burned, bludgeoned, tore, bit—and with it the desire to die so that he no longer had to suffer.
But desire alone was not enough.
And, as bad as the pain was, worse still was feeling none in his legs.
“You were lucky. The bullet didn’t hit a single organ,” a doctor would tell him later. “As for your legs, you fell backward onto another soldier. You pressed a nerve against his rifle or his binoculars. Who knows? You were there for hours. And the cold did its bit, too. There’s damage to the nervous system, severe inflammation, and your toes froze. There’s no way of knowing whether you’ll recover the feeling in your legs, but we think we can save your feet. Good thing you were wearing thick socks. Time will tell. For now, rest. Don’t move, Schipper!”
As if he could. Karl couldn’t even speak, his jawbone was so tightly clenched, as if trying to kill the pain, and more than that, kill the terror of the contrast between pain and its absence. Uncontrollable pain, unbearable nothingness.
Karl Schipper had emerged from the Russian forest with raw, perforated flesh above lifeless legs. Ragged branches above a dead trunk. All he could do now was scream and groan, but inside, where nobody else could hear.
A bullet had taken him out of one war and plunged him into another: the one between his torso and his legs, between two monsters, one of excess and the other of nothingness. His only relief was the Demerol.
“Look at it this way, Schipper: you’re lucky. Your legs could be hurting, too.”
Lucky. He was lucky.
Between episodes of Demerol delirium, he could see very clearly that, in his body, life was fighting against death, good against evil, everything against nothing. He was the only witness to these battles and the only victim. He tried to explain it to his doctors, to his nurses, but no one seemed to understand.
“Listen to me!”
But no matter how he begged, nobody helped him.
“It’s all right, Schipper, don’t worry. You’ll be home soon, and we saved your feet.”
There were days—many, most of them—when he would have preferred the numbness in his legs to conquer the territory held by pain. To kill it all and give him rest. But the wounded branches of the tree that was Karl Schipper were intent on living. Little by little, electric current by electric current, they made strategic advances and, in doing so, enlisted more pain.
It made little difference that they transported him by ship and not by road. The steadiness of his journey made little difference if the pain emanated from inside, and if between the pain and the Demerol, Karl lost his head and even his memories. It made little difference when they told him: Cheer up, Schipper, you’re going home, to the first-class hospital in Königsberg. It made little difference that he’d see his wife and his children. Little or none, because Karl Schipper was in the clutches of a monster that writhed and made him writhe, that with its infinite tentacles had now reached his toes, showing no mercy and offering no respite.
Hence, when his wife and older children arrived to visit him at Königsberg Hospital, they found him unable to believe they were there, and were not just a new form of torture that his private monster had conceived.
Hence, they returned to the farm in silence, and hence why it took Arno so long to persuade his mother to take him to visit.
“They won’t let you go in, but send him a letter.”
Arno did something he thought was better: he sent his collection of tank drawings in the hope that his father would pin them on the wall, admire them, and then explain to his artist son how they worked.
His father looked at the drawings without looking, for an instant and without admiration, because the war, the pain, and the craving for Demerol had robbed him of the ability. He had no wall to pin them on, separated only by curtains that allowed a concert of moans to pass through unmuffled, his own voice joining in when he let his guard down.
From TEARS OF AMBER by Sofía Segovia, translated by Simon Bruni (Amazon Crossing; May 1, 2021)
About the Author
I was born in Monterrey, Mexico. The 5th child in a family of six daughters and sons. My father is an OB-GYN and my mother a business woman turned politician, now both retired. We had a tennis court at home so that and all sport was a big part of our family. But surprisingly, in a growing city with no book stores or libraries, in that family, even my nanny was an avid reader. She was also my storyteller, which is a big part of my love for writing. I went to school at The American School of Monterrey, where I learned many things, but more than anything, the love for other languages and all aspects of theater, musical or other, on stage and off. I took a sabbatical to study French in Switzerland after high school. That’s when I realized I loved to travel and go to museums, that’s when I saw-touched-felt history and became an observer. I actually have a museums-of-the-world bucket list that keeps growing.
I went to college in Monterrey for two years before getting married at 20, in 1985. With my new husband, José, I lived in San Diego, California for a couple of years. When we came back to Monterrey, I went back to college to finish my degree in Communications. That’s when my involvement in politics became professional. We had our first daughter when I was 25; we have three children in all. I always kept writing —speeches, plays, political campaigns, but nothing and nobody ever said to me: fiction is your thing. Until the end of the world was announced for the year 2000. Then I asked myself: what’s your thing, yours that has nothing to do with anybody else? Writing short stories as a girl or a young woman even in college had given me the most pleasure, I realized, and it had been a long time since I’d written one for nobody, just for me, just because. So, I decided to explore that feeling again. I joined a writing workshop, and realized I no longer had short stories in me, I had novels. I wrote Huracán. It took me a while to get published in the big leagues, but the wait and my personal evolution was worth it! The Murmur of Bees opened all possibilities for me. The came Tears of Amber. So now I write and read and travel. I check off items from my museum bucket list, but have been back many times to many of them. I’ve been married to José for 35 years and been sweethearts for 40. Sports are important in our family, but also reading, travel, our pets, history, museums, theater and cooking mostly Mexican, French, Italian and Indian food. Everyone in our family is an excellent cook.
JEFF RICHARDS is the author of Open Country: A Civil War Novel in Stories and the domestic noir novel Lady Killer. His fiction, essays, and cowboy poetry have appeared in over 27 publications including Prick of the Spindle, Pinch, New South, and Southern Humanities Review and five anthologies including “Tales Out of School” (Beacon Press); “Letters to J.D. Salinger” (University of Wisconsin Press); and “Higher Education” (Pearson), a college composition reader. A fan of blues music, he lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, with his wife and two dogs and travels often to Colorado where his kids live.
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