Introduction

In the story telling style of Kristin Hannah and Delia Owens, The Road Renounced is a World War I tale of one soldier's triumphs and tragedies as told by the woman who loves him.

2015. Prospect Park, Pennsylvania. Suzanne Ryan uncovers her grandmother's diary hidden in the binding of a century-old photo album. Thrilled to learn about her grandmother, Maude, who died before Suzanne was born, she reads the first entry, written on Maude's tenth birthday.

1915. Prospect Park, Pennsylvania. Maude Brewer, her brother, Henry, and his best friend, Buzz Ryan, live a relatively carefree existence. But the darkening conflict in Europe looms, threatening them all with the fight of their lives.

At the same time, across the ocean, darkness has already fallen as the Germans march into neutral Belgium and shatter the life of nurse Marthe Peeters, whose family is viciously killed right in front of her. She is captured and forced to travel with the German Army, each step escalating the rage in her heart that explodes into plans for revenge.

But as Maude's story unfolds through the years, it intersects with Marthe's and despite the fact that an ocean separates them, it is clear that the two women share their perspectives on the war. They also, Suzanne learns, share the love of the same man, Buzz Ryan, Suzanne's grandfather. Buzz must not only fight the war on the battlefield, he must also fight the war within his heart.

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Excerpt

PROLOGUE

Marthe

Liege, Belgium

August 4, 1914

The neighborhood market on the outskirts of Liege swelled with shoppers, eager to claim their share of the scarce goods that arrived only an hour earlier. Marthe Peeters, elated to find butter again after months without it, counted out seven francs to the clerk and waited for her change. But her focus shifted to the flickering shadows on the wall above the counter that darkened, then dimmed, then shot to the ceiling.

Around her, the other customers grew restless, their voices rising along with the commotion from outside. Hair rose on the back of her neck and she snatched up the butter and left, her change forgotten.

The market’s door slammed behind her as she scrambled up the hill for a better view of the shadows’ origin. As she watched, the strange glow in the evening sky twisted into vicious tongues of flame that licked the night and shot sparkling embers heavenward like a new crop of stars. Even at that distance, smoke stung her eyes and clawed at her throat, soot mixing with the bile that filled her mouth.

Her heart clenched, then filled with dread.

It was her house that burned, her family’s screams that reached her above the fire’s roar.

Marthe dropped her treasured bundle and raced down the hill, tucking the gold locket that held her parents’ pictures into her blouse as she ran. Nothing mattered except saving her family from the inferno that had, until that moment, been their home.

The scent of burning flesh assaulted her and she followed its source to the front yard where her mother had dragged her sister. Flames sprouted from the younger girl’s sweater and Marthe smothered them with her light jacket while her mother tackled the smoldering braids with her bare hands.

Beside them, Marthe’s father struggled under the weight of his writing desk, dragging it down the front steps by its broken legs and then placing it safely in the grass where it tilted to one side. Marthe placed her sister next to the desk and flew up the steps to emerge with a load of blankets and pillows.

With her face blackened from smoke and her lungs wheezing from lack of air, she turned to get another load. Her father stopped her.

“Enough, Marthe. That’s all we can do.” His shoulders drooped and his face wore defeat.

“Papa,” Marthe rasped. “How did this happen?”

Before her father could answer, Marthe saw others surrounding them, standing clear of the fire’s light and partially hidden in the dim of the early evening. Soldiers. Feldgrau uniforms greeted her, regardless of the direction she faced. The greenish-grey jackets fed her fears.

The soldiers held her brother’s arms behind him. Again, the hair on Marthe’s neck rose and she turned to her father, her eyes wide, her chest bursting with questions.

“The Germans have invaded Belgium,” he said. “They think your brother is a sharpshooter. A sniper. They have arrested—”

An agonized scream broke through her father’s soft words.

“She’s dead!” Marthe’s mother sat in the grass, cradling Marthe’s sister in her arms and rocking her back and forth. “She’s dead! The fire killed her.” Marthe’s mother rose, her face contorted in anguish, and flew at the nearest soldier—an officer by his insignia—then beat his chest with her fists. “You did this. You killed her. My baby is dead!”

The soldier drew his pistol and aimed it at the woman’s head.

“No!” Marthe pulled her mother away while her father knelt in front of the officer.

“No, please, sir.” Her father’s voice broke. “Can’t you see she is sick with grief? She didn’t know what she said. Please, sir, have mercy for a mother’s loss.”

The officer’s expression never changed but his eyes left her mother and turned to her father. Time slowed and Marthe’s breath stopped but she held onto her mother’s sagging form, the two of them frozen to the ground where they stood.

Without a word, the officer pointed his weapon at her father’s head and the crack of a gunshot cut through the night. In a haze of horror, Marthe watched her father tilt sideways, then crumple to the earth. She pulled her mother closer but a second gunshot exploded and jerked Marthe backward, tearing her mother from her arms and tumbling her lifeless form to Marthe’s feet. The bullet that traveled through her mother’s body lodged in Marthe’s upper arm, along with blinding pain.

At the third shot, her brother collapsed.

The officer spun toward her, his Luger trained on her forehead. He cocked his gun, slashing her remaining life to seconds. She clamped her eyes shut and clutched her locket tightly in her fist, then waited, steeling herself for the momentary pain from the bullet. And the final oblivion of death.

But only the roar of the fire, along with her terror-induced whimpers, reached her ears. She cracked one eye open to see a soldier whisper to her family’s executioner. The officer’s arm lowered and he studied her face, then motioned with his gun.

Blood trickled from Marthe’s arm and she opened her mouth to scream. Before any sound emerged, rough hands bound her arms while another clamped over her lips, sickening her with the aromas of strong cheese and gunpowder. She worked her jaws and sank her teeth into her captor’s meaty hand, gratified when he cried out.

Until his fist slammed into her face.

The night spun but the soldiers holding her arms refused to let her fall. The cold steel of a gun muzzle ground into her temple and the soldiers dragged her from her home, forcing her to leave her family where they fell, huddling together in death as she had often seen them in life.

The column reached the rise of the hill and Marthe staggered along with them, determined not to pass out. At the hill’s crest, she slid on the butter from her earlier purchase, ground into the dirt by the soldiers’ boots. Her prior elation at finding the rare item, along with her zest for life, had evaporated.

Forever, she feared.

One foot in front of the other, she stumbled along, chillingly numb. The pain she expected her heart to feel from the loss of her family hadn’t caught up to the horror her brain had witnessed. She had no pain, in fact, from her family’s death or the bullet wound in her arm.

But her heart raged with hate. Waves and waves of it.

And an overpowering resolve for revenge. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

* Are you able to relate to what Florence, Maude’s mother, went through with her worry that actually kept her in bed most of the time? What would/could have helped the situation?

* Do you agree with Marthe’s decision to spy against the Germans?

* Discuss your view of the life Buzz and Marthe would have had if she had lived and come to this country with him.

* Do you think Maude was too hard on Buzz for his drinking, considering what he had been through in his life?

* Why do you think Maude didn’t leave Buzz during the years rather than put up with his drunkenness and abuse?

* Do you agree with Suzanne’s decision not to tell Maude’s remaining children what happened to their father?

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