He makes her a promise: he will love her forever and always be there for her. But then everything changes… The new historical novel by bestselling author Lilli Beck.

WENN DIE HOFFNUNG ERWACHT
(When Hope Awakens)
by Lilli Beck
Blanvalet/PRH Germany, June 2021

Germany, 1947. Nora’s friend invites her to a German-American New Year’s Eve party, where she’s swept off her feet by the handsome US officer William. Nora tries long and hard to hide her passionate affair from her father, but when she becomes pregnant and William is ordered back to the US she has no choice but to confess. Her father is beside himself, but has a solution: a banker friend of his offers to marry Nora and cover the family’s debts. Nora has no intention of agreeing to the plan. She leaves town with her son under cover of night and takes the train to Munich, where she meets a feverish and confused young woman in the street. Nora walks Celia home – to the villa of the wealthy Wagners, who mistake Nora’’s baby for Celia’s son. It’s a fatal misunderstanding, but one that Nora does nothing to dispel…

Lilli Beck trained as a wholesaler. In 1968 she went to live in Munich, where she was discovered by a model agent in the popular disco Blow up. She spent ten years working for magazines such as Brigitte, Burda-Moden and TWEN and was a Pirelli bonnet mascot. WENN DIE HOFFNUNG ERWACHT is her fourth historical novel for Blanvalet.