Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Armando Lucas Correa, author of The German Girl published just last month by Atria.

Armando is an award winning author and journalist with 20 years of experience in Hispanic media and is the Editor-in-Chief of People in Espanol.

The German Girl is his first novel.

In 1939, Jews were already being treated like pariahs in Germany. Kristalnacht had already occurred. Jews were forced to wear armbands, their businesses and home were taken and they were gradually waiting, sometimes without hope or attempt at escape for the noose around their neck to inextricably tighten.

But then, for those who had the motive and the means, their came a beacon in the darkness.

The transatlantic liner the Saint Louis appeared, a golden ticket out of Germany to the island of Cuba. But that ship ended up being for most of its passengers a circuitous death sentence. Forbidden to land in Cuba except for a few, like our protagonists, it was then ignored in the United States with President Roosevelt infamously failing to answer a cable asking for mercy.

It then wandered until returning to Europe, not to Germany, but dropping its passengers, those who remained alive, at places like Paris, London, The Netherlands and Belgium. Most, those who did to return to London died in concentration camps.

Armando traces the journey of The St. Louis, through the eyes of the young German Girl Hannah and her Mother and Father as well as her “boyfriend” Leo and other passengers, some few of which were as lucky or unlucky as she.

There is also an equally compelling tale of Anna, Hannah’s great niece and a reunion in Cuba, after generations in which we discover much that was hidden and live through Hannah’s eyes the past reawakened and from Anna’s voice revelations about her father AND her mother.

Welcome Armando and thanks for joining us today.