About the Book

Book: Faces in the Window

Authors: Andrew Busch and Melinda Busch

Genre: Christian Historical Fiction

Release Date: October, 2022

Franz Maedler, an officer in the Wehrmacht, loses a leg in Stalingrad and is evacuated just before it becomes impossible to do so. He returns to a desk job with the Army General Staff in Berlin but is deeply conflicted. His father is committed to the Nazi cause, as seems to be his brother Friedrich. Yet his girlfriend Katrin is a devout Christian, as was his now-deceased mother, and his conscience is haunted by things he was a part of on the Eastern Front. He wants to marry Katrin, but she will not agree until he decides who he is and who he follows. Then, unexpectedly, a moment of crisis forces Franz to choose. Will he side with the cross or with the swastika? And what will it cost him?

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About the Authors

Andrew and Melinda Busch were both born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, and were introduced in 1994 by their junior high school math teacher. They married in 1995 and have three grown children. They now live in Rialto, California.

Andrew teaches American government at Claremont McKenna College in southern California. He has authored or co-authored about two dozen books on American politics, government, and public policy. He received his Ph.D. in Government from the University of Virginia. Melinda is a freelance author who has published numerous short stories and children’s books. She received her Master’s degree in education from Concordia University-Portland. Faces in the Window is their first co-authored book.

More from Andrew and Melinda

We came up with the idea for our book after a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. in 2006, but didn’t start writing it until late 2019. The COVID lock-down gave us a lot of time at home to work on it.

Writing together was fun. Sometimes one of us would draft a section and the other one would revise it and then we would go back and forth until we were satisfied with it. Other times, when there was important dialogue, we would each pick a character, go onto Google Docs, and have the conversation in real time. We had to be sharp, since our characters often found themselves in a tight spot. Though we planned out the story, sometimes the conversations took on a life of their own, and things went in a different direction.

One of us is a poet and an author of children’s books, fantasy stories, and fan fiction, while the other is a professor who has written extensively about American government but has never before dipped his toe into the vasty depths of fiction. Together, we had a great time!

My Thoughts

I was not prepared for the emotional journey that this book took me on. Faces in the Window is written by Andrew Busch and Melinda Busch. This book drops us in the middle of WWII - and we see a German Soldier, Franz Maedler, who returns home after an injury. He is haunted by what he has seen and what he has become.

Franz is dealing with a lot of conflicting issues. He sees that Hitler may not be right. He is wrestling with his a lot. His father was VERY committed to Hitler and his cause, yet his mother was a Christian woman. He is worried on how his father will react with him being injured and given a desk job. After all the horrible violence he has seen he really wrestles if he even still believes in God. He wonders how God can let so much suffering and such happen if he is a God of Grace.

The war, Franz soon realizes has put some doubts in his girlfriend, Katrin also. Katrin is a devout Christian and she tells him that he needs to make a decision who he will be loyal too. Hitler of God.

I appreciated the authors putting in so much historical research into this story. I have read alot of WWII era books the last year and this one is in the top 10 of the ones that I have read. The authors also do a great job with portraying how those serving in the German Army may have had so many moral demons they had to wrestle.

The book is well written. The storyline is engaging. Thank you to the author, publisher and Celebrate Lit for allowing me to read a copy of this book - all thoughts are my own.