Friedl is the biography of a spirited, young, free-thinking girl growing up in Frankfurt during the rise -- then dictatorship -- of Adolf Hitler. Friedl, a gifted, budding classical pianist, is ordered to leave her music conservatory studies at once and support the war effort in Frankfurt. As her parents stood vigil over her younger sister who was lying comatose in an Austrian hospital, Friedl was consigned into the Nazi army, given two hours to pack, and ordered to board an ill-fated troop train.

Friedl will have an obvious audience in historians, veterans (on either side), holocaust-focused readers (young and old), and relatives and descendants of those who participated in World War II. It is more than merely another war story. Women, as well as men, will be strongly attracted to this courageous young woman who, as did an entire generation of German youth who survived the Great War, completely missed growing up -- their childhood years -- because of Adolf Hitler.

Readers will:

learn of the hardships borne by the German populace faced with rebuilding their infrastructure and society after the first world war,

learn of the severely restrictive penalties imposed upon Germany by the punitive and unfair Treaty of Versailles, just as a world-wide depression begins,

learn how Hitler and his National Socialists (NAZI) Party‘s promises and solutions fooled Germans into believing their country would be better off with them in power,

learn of the heat and explosions of Allied bombs and artillery strikes on air raid shelters full of German citizens,

learn how the Hausfrau struggled to prepare meager family meals while sharing makeshift outside cook stoves,

learn, as Friedl did, after being cleared and trained to decipher top-secret messages, that the Nazis really were clandestinely killing the Jews, and that they had a “Final Solution” for eradicating the Jewish race in place.

Friedl is a wonderful “read” and will make an award-winning motion picture or television film presentation just when stories about WWII are so popular.