Works in Progress
Winter on the Rose
How far would you go to protect the ones you love?
Vienna, Austria, August 1938: Everything and everyone Hannelore "Hanni" Brunner loves is rapidly disappearing in the wake of the German invasion. Businesses close. Friends vanish overnight. New laws restrict Jews from public life, and it's only getting worse. When her father, Yakov, is violently beaten at the Prater for refusing to eat grass by the invading Germans, Hanni retreats to her flat overlooking the Danube with her husband, Karl, and their two-year-old son, Aaron, thinking she is safe. But the laws continue to tighten around them, until Yakov is forced to let Clara, his Aryan secretary, go. Hanni and her mother, Anna, must now take over all her work. About to report to work on her first day, Hanni is suddenly confronted with her brother Levi's failed sabotage plan. Forced to flee Vienna, she is torn between leaving her two-year-old son behind in the care of a stranger or facing arrest for a crime she did not commit.