This is an interesting story of the lives of some of the residents of the Ardennes region of Europe. This heavily wooded, hilly terrain featured significantly in the latter days of World War II, when Hitler chose to launch a desperate counterattack against the Allies through this weakly manned sector of the Western Front. The area also figured importantly through the ages of European history and the author leads us through some of this history. The major focus is on the characters however. The author seems to employ a stream of consciousness, train of thought, style of writing that wanders through the lives of his characters sometimes leaving the reader behind. One of the main characters is Robert, who is a product of the chance meeting during the war of his mother and an American G. I. The only thing his mother can or perhaps is willing to tell him about his father is that he had been a jazz musician prior to his stint in the U.S. Army. He had been trapped behind the lines by the surprise advance of the German troops through the Ardennes. He soon left the welcoming arm’s of his paramour and supposedly returned to his unit as soon as the danger had passed. As an adult, Robert has grown up befriended to a supposedly blind veteran of the German Wehrmacht, Markus Hebel. Marcus of German descent, was a resident of the Ardennes, who was conscripted into the German Army when the Ardennes were overrun early in the war. Unlike his son, who was enamered of Hitler and his Third Reich, Marcus had no desire to fight for the Germans. Marcus relates to Robert how his life was changed serving for the Germans on the Eastern front. His son was trapped by the Russian army, along with 250,000 other German troops in Stalingrad. Marcus was forced through his position in the communication corps to hear and chronicle the desperate and fruitless struggle of the trapped troops including his son. Marcus was changed forever by this trauma. The narrative of the story wanders occasionally forward and back in time and place sometimes making it difficult to keep up. The overall theme and message of the book is very heartwarming on a personal level, even though the story deals with events and some people who would otherwise be considered unsympathetic. The story is ultimately about how people are defined by the borders they set for their lives. The lines they will or will not cross. The paths they will or will not take. Book provided for review by Amazon Vine. ( )