[Blog Tour] 'The Amber Crane' By Malve von Hassell #HistoricalFiction #Timeslip

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The Book:

The Amber Crane
By Malve von Hassell
Publication Date: 25th June 2021
Publisher: Odyssey Books
Page Length: 268 Pages
Genre: Time-slip Historical Fiction / Young Adult

The Blurb:

Chafing at the rules of the amber guild, Peter, an apprentice during the waning years of the Thirty Years’ War, finds and keeps a forbidden piece of amber, despite the risk of severe penalties should his secret be discovered.

Little does he know that this amber has hidden powers, transporting him into a future far beyond anything he could imagine. In dreamlike encounters, Peter witnesses the ravages of the final months of World War II in and around his home. He becomes embroiled in the troubles faced by Lioba, a girl he meets who seeks to escape from the oncoming Russian army.

Peter struggles with the consequences of his actions, endangering his family, his amber master’s reputation, and his own future. How much is Peter prepared to sacrifice to right his wrongs?

• Trigger Warnings: References to rape, Holocaust, World War II, violence

Buy Links:

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'The Amber Crane' - Excerpt:

Excerpt from Chapter 8 - LIOBA

Peter bumps against a wall. It is dark. Feeling around with his hand, he touches a metal knob. He twists it, and a door opens.

Peter stares at the sight in front of him, faintly illuminated by early morning light from a window. It is a room filled with rows of wooden tables and chairs. Peter’s eyes are drawn to a huge picture on the wall. A face with a mustache, shiny black hair combed to one side, and piercing eyes looms over the room. On a big blackboard, he can just make out two lines on top in a scraggly script, the last word missing where someone had started to wipe the board.

Oh, stranger, when you arrive in Sparta, tell of our pride
That here, obeying her behests, we –

“That here, obeying her behests, we died,” he completes the line in his mind. He had heard the lines often enough from Lorenz, who had learned them from his tutor. He had recited them to Peter over and over again at night when they sat in their beds and talked. Three hundred Spartans had died there at the battle of Thermopylae, the narrow pass where they made their last stand against tens of thousands of enemies.

Maybe this is a schoolroom, albeit an elaborate one. In the school in Stolpmünde, where Peter and Lorenz learned their letters, there are only benches without tables and a plain lectern for the teacher. Still, this space somehow smells like a schoolroom, stale and musty, evoking bored students waiting for the droning voice of the teacher to come to an end.

Startled by a soft rustling, Peter whips his head around.

The girl from his dreams is sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, wrapped in a ratty-looking blanket. She is awake.

“It’s you again.” The girl pulls up the blanket. “Are you in my dream, or am I in yours?”

“I honestly do not know,” Peter says slowly. “This is not like any dream I have ever had.”

“Well, at least you’re not a Russian soldier. Anyway, they haven’t gotten this far west yet. Are you going to vanish again in midsentence?”

“I do not even know how I got here. Why do you talk so strangely?” He could understand her, but it was like listening to someone through a thick blanket. She seemed to swallow many of her words. “Why do you keep talking about Russians? Where is this?”

“Somewhere east of Danzig.” The girl frowns at him. “You sound like someone reciting the Luther Bible.”

Peter stares at her, bewildered and shaken. The bread from his supper sits in his stomach like a rock. The long-legged beast he remembers from before gets up from behind the desk and stretches.

Peter backs up.

“Don’t worry, she won’t bite you.”

It is the tallest dog he has ever seen—if it is a dog. It comes up to Peter and starts sniffing him vigorously. He can feel its breath. Then it evidently loses interest and lies down again, its legs stretched out in front like those of a crane. The matted fur smells like a sack of dirty woolens, but it is a warm and comforting scent.

“Your dog seems real,” Peter says, eyeing the beast nervously.

“So do you—for someone in a dream.” The girl studies him. She does not seem afraid any longer. “My name is Lioba. What’s yours?”

“Peter.”

“Well, Peter, are you going to vanish again, or can we talk a bit? This is actually nice. You are the first person I have talked to in a while.” She starts to laugh. “Since you aren’t real, it’s not as if you are going to hurt me.” Then she wipes her face roughly as if irritated.

“You are crying,” Peter says.

Lioba’s hands are long and slender, but her nails are ragged and dirty.

The dog lifts its head as if in response to her distress and pushes its long nose against her leg.

Uncomfortable with Lioba’s evident anguish, Peter tries to distract her. “What sort of dog is that?”

“I think it’s a Borzoi.” Her voice sounds muffled.

“A what?”

“You know—a Russian wolfhound.”

“What do you mean, you think? This is not your dog?”

“She has been following me for weeks. You don’t have anything to eat, by any chance?” The dark shadows under Lioba’s eyes emphasize her broad cheekbones.

“Sorry.” Peter thinks of the loaf of bread Mistress Nowak had cut up for supper. Maybe the next time he goes to sleep, he should try to keep a piece of bread in his pocket.

Lioba drops the blanket and gets up. She closes the shutters of the windows and fastens them. She pulls the two panels of black fabric together, plunging the room into total darkness.

“Why are you doing this? I cannot see you.”

“Haven’t you heard of the blackout?” she scoffs.

Blackout? Bewildered, Peter hears the girl move toward the wall near the door. Suddenly, light streams from a strange lamp. At least, he thinks it is a lamp. Definitely not a candle or an oil lantern. “How did you do that?” he asks.

“Really?” Lioba scowls. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No, of course not. What is that? How did you make it glow?”

“Electricity, stupid! What century are you living in?”

“What do you mean, what century?” How dare this girl call him stupid? Clearly, she was confused. “Everybody knows that. This is the year of our Lord 1644.”

Lioba stares at him. Then her lips widen into a grin. “I don’t believe this. I am talking to someone in a dream, and he is not even from my own time.”

“Your own time?”

“Right. I don’t know about the year of our Lord 1644. This sure isn’t that. This is 1944. But I would gladly trade with you if I could.”

Three hundred years into the future. Peter reaches out to touch the wall next to him. It feels solid. The dog’s smell certainly feels real. Nothing else does in this strange, flat, dark grey world. It is as if he is standing outside, looking through the frame of a window.

Lioba frowns, folding her arms across her chest.

There is a roaring in his ears. A door bangs loudly somewhere, and everything goes dark.

Malve von Hassell

Author Bio:

Malve von Hassell is a freelance writer, researcher, and translator. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the New School for Social Research. Working as an independent scholar, she published The Struggle for Eden: Community Gardens in New York City (Bergin & Garvey 2002) and Homesteading in New York City 1978-1993: The Divided Heart of Loisaida (Bergin & Garvey 1996). She has also edited her grandfather Ulrich von Hassell's memoirs written in prison in 1944, Der Kreis schließt sich - Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft 1944 (Propylaen Verlag 1994). She has taught at Queens College, Baruch College, Pace University, and Suffolk County Community College, while continuing her work as a translator and writer. She has self-published two children’s picture books, Letters from the Tooth Fairy (2012/2020) and Turtle Crossing (2021), and her translation and annotation of a German children’s classic by Tamara Ramsay, Rennefarre: Dott’s Wonderful Travels and Adventures (Two Harbors Press, 2012). The Falconer’s Apprentice (namelos, 2015) was her first historical fiction novel for young adults. She has published Alina: A Song for the Telling (BHC Press, 2020), set in Jerusalem in the time of the crusades, and The Amber Crane (Odyssey Books, 2021), set in Germany in 1645 and 1945. She has completed a biographical work about a woman coming of age in Nazi Germany and is working on a historical fiction trilogy featuring Adela of Normandy.

Connect with Malve von Hassell:

• Website ✔ Twitter ✔ Facebook ✔ LinkedIn ✔ Book Bub ✔ Amazon Author Page ✔ Goodreads ✔ 

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