The invasion of Normandy in June 1944 did not end the war in Europe, yet D-Day was a turning of the tide toward an Allied victory. Aiken imagines a young man, Lieutenant Henry Anderson, contributing his part in a super-secret operation beginning in 1943. He abandoned his pregnant wife for the good of the cause and, decades after the war, returned to Wisconsin under the strangest of circumstances to introduce his son, now grown, to the father he never knew.
The story is told in “Race To Resurrection: A WWII Historical Thriller” ($14.99 in paperback from RO Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle). Germany’s V-2 rocket program at Peenemünde, being developed by scientists including Wernher von Braun, threatens the Allies with destruction. Security at the facility is overseen by SS-Oberführer Wolfgang Korbach and, it turns out, Henry Anderson, who speaks fluent German taught him by his grandmother, looks exactly like Korbach.
The plan is Mission Impossible audacious: Spend weeks training Anderson to “become” Korbach, matching all his little behavioral quirks, and then, since Korbach was recovering from shrapnel wounds at a facility in Portugal, switch him out, so that the Korbach that returned to Peenemünde was really Anderson. Against all odds, it works. Though Korbach is a notorious womanizer, Anderson vows to remain true to his wife and son, though she had been told he had been killed. Yet all bets are off when he meets 23-year-old French national co-worker Angelique Dubois.
The ethical quandary will hold readers spellbound in this mesmerizing tale which, 45 years later, will see Henry, and Wolf, show up in Wisconsin at Henry’s grandson’s wedding, each claiming to be the real Henry.
Full of surprises, Aiken has written an unputdownable tale.
