Fireweed Read online

  Cover image: Berlin Skyline City Panorama with Sunset - landmark in Germany © BerlinPictures,

  Cover design copyright © 2015 by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  Published by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  American Fork, Utah

  Copyright © 2015 by Terry Montague

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any format or in any medium without the written permission of the publisher, Covenant Communications, Inc., P.O. Box 416, American Fork, UT 84003. The views expressed within this work are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Covenant Communications, Inc., or any other entity.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are either products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real, or are used fictitiously.

  First Printing: August 1992

  ISBN 978-1-68047-637-8

  Acclaim for the Book

  Fireweed is an intensely emotional, complex, authentically detailed novel of the Saints’ struggle to keep family and testimony intact in Hitler’s Germany. Their brave battle will kindle your admiration while it wrings your heart.

  Terry Montague, wise in human relationships, fills her story with richly drawn, real, and engrossing people who persist in the reader’s mind long after the reading experience is over. She shows us ourselves—sometimes shocking our sensibilities, often casting light on our own lives, always challenging us to reexamine our values and the depth of our commitment to them.

  Mary L. Smith, Author

  Fireweed—a stirring story about an LDS German girl who watches the destruction of her world during Hitler’s Germany. Her strength and love sustain her during loss of family and country. Her faith, nourished by God’s love, helps her preserve others.

  Montague’s memorable characters bring to life the plight of the German people caught in Hitler’s lies. Yet throughout the novel, each character’s wonderful sense of humor and compassion reinforce the belief of hope and survival in the upheaval of a war-ruined country. Fireweed should be read by everyone who sometimes feels overwhelmed by life’s little problems.

  Krisan R. Hardcastle, Artist and Illustrator

  How This Book Came to Be

  Except for the time I spent at school (I graduated from BYU), I’ve spent my life in Rupert, Idaho. I grew up in a small German community here. The community is descendant of the German colonies founded along Russia’s Black Sea at the time of Catharine the Great. About the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, anti-German sentiment forced most of the Germans out of Russia. They came to America and settled in Nebraska; South and North Dakota; Rupert and American Falls, Idaho; the Palouse Valley in Washington; and Lodi, California—anywhere there was homestead land. My grandparents, aunts and uncles, and the neighbors next door and across the street were all Russian-German. Everyone spoke German. The church we went to had services in German. We made our own sausage in the backyard and ate cheese dumplings on Sundays (that explains my figure). None of my relatives called themselves Russian in spite of the land they came from. My grandfather always said, “Just because the cat had kittens in the oven doesn’t make them biscuits.” Everyone was and still is fiercely German.

  My dad was injured at the Battle of the Bulge and left to die. It was so cold his open head wound froze before he bled to death, and he was able to stumble around the Ardennes for several days. He accidentally crossed behind German lines many times before he finally stumbled upon an American radio unit. He won’t talk about that experience much. I often wonder if he felt confused at having an enemy he was so closely connected to.

  While growing up I remember watching the show Combat. I remember that in the show everyone who spoke German was a “dirty Kraut.” I saw that same attitude in old Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny cartoons. I refused to believe my tiny grandmother could be a “dirty Kraut.” I was in the sixth grade when I started reading about Nazi Germany and the history of World War II Europe. Through my studies I tried to reconcile my American heritage and my German (“dirty Kraut”) heritage. I don’t know that I did.

  I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and when my boredom started to drive Quinn (my husband) crazy, he encouraged me to write. As I was trying to find a subject I met Norm Seibold, who is our county commissioner. His experiences as a missionary in Nazi Germany inspired me to write Mine Angels Round About. While I was researching that book, I talked to more than a half a hundred missionaries who also served in Nazi Germany. They’d say, “Let me run in the next room and get my album.” Then their wives, several of whom were German, would start telling me their stories of the war. After Mine Angels Round About came out, I knew I needed to tell another part of the story—one from the German point of view.

  This is where Lisel, Marta, Papa, Frau Heidemann, and Kurt were created. It isn’t easy writing a full-length novel, but my characters helped me by showing up in my dreams and talking to me about themselves and what they were doing and what they should be doing and what I should be doing. They were real to me. So real that now, sometimes, I miss them and have to go back and read a part of my manuscript just to see them again.

  I wanted to make their experiences real for the reader too. So I did something a lot of my friends had fits over. For the last several chapters of the book (about six weeks worth) I decreased my calorie intake to less than 800 a day to be able to realistically describe the hunger the characters felt and what that hunger did to them. I was very careful though. I drank adequate amounts of water and took some heavy duty vitamins. I didn’t lose any weight, but I did lose my verbal skills. Often I couldn’t finish the sentence I had started, a problem my husband will testify I didn’t have before. This was particularly troublesome when I was invited to Logan to lecture on fiction writing. I’m still embarrassed about what happened there. Another phenomenon that happened is that I didn’t have any emotional control and spent a lot of time crying. I don’t know what I was crying about, but I was crying. I was also angry and very pessimistic—not like me at all. I also found out that when you’re really hungry over a long period of time and you bend over you see bursts of light in front of your eyes and that standing too long makes you really dizzy. That was a miserable experience, but I think it made a better story, and to a writer that is what matters most. What also matters to me personally is that through this writing experience I’ve bridged that gap between my American and German heritage and understand clearly now that human love and suffering is the same no matter what language you speak.

  Terry Montague

  1

  With her breath tight in her throat, Lisel Spann slid cautious fingers between the heavy draperies and parted them just enough to see the dark, cobblestone street below. Pools of summer rain glittered as a length of gray cloud shrouded, for an instant, the full moon. A gust of wind tore at the loose corners of a huge, wall-hung poster that proclaimed, Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer. “One People, One Country, One Leader.”

  No living thing moved on the street. But still Lisel watched—in silence, in darkness—waiting for a movement in the shadows of the tall, brick house across the street.

  “What are you doing in the dark?” her older sister asked as she came through the front door. “I can’t even see to hang up my hat.”

  Lisel heard her fumbling at the rack behind the door. “Shhh,” she whispered to Marta. “Some men are down on the street. They have been watching this building for the last half hour.”

  Marta moved with quick steps across the living room to the tiny alcove that served as a kitchen. “I did not see anyone down there,” Marta remarked in a voice that suggested if she did not see anything, there was nothing to see.

  “That is because you came through the back garden,” Lisel replied.

  Marta came up behind her and looked over her shoulder. “Your imagination has gotten the best of you again. There is no one down there.”

  Then a tiny, metallic glint betrayed the presence lurking in the darkness. “There!” Lisel said with a note of triumph. “I told you they were there.”

  Lisel sensed Marta’s shrug. “So there is someone down on the street. They could be just ordinary German citizens, waiting for their ride.”

  Lisel glanced back at her elder sister. “And maybe cows chase rabbits,” she replied.

  Marta’s mouth tightened in impatience, but she said nothing. Even though Marta was only two years older than Lisel, Marta was always the grown-up, sensible, predictable one. She wore her soft, brown hair in the same short, smooth style every day. She got up at the same time every morning and went through the same tedious daily routines of classes at the Red Cross nursing school, then shopping and housework. She never complained. She never went to movies, preferring to sit at home reading her textbooks or listening to music on the radio with her mending in her lap. When she became angry or upset, her warm-brown eyes flashed, but she rarely allowed herself to pronounce an angry word.

  In contrast, Lisel—her red hair braided in long strands that hung on either side of her gamine face, her red-brown eyes that flashed her every emotion—frequently lost her patience, her temper, and her heart. She said everything she felt and often made a fool of herself. Her busy imagination took her out of the confusing, contradictory atmosphere of Germany to glittering, glamorous Hollywood, where she danced in a sleek pink gown trimmed with boa feathers, on the arm of Fred Astaire. She sang too loudly in church just because she liked the music, but her singing made the branch president cover his smile with his hand, the m
usic director scowl, and the red come up in her papa’s neck. She often shocked her father and provoked her sister. Everyone said she was that way because she was only sixteen, still a schoolgirl. They said she would grow out of it. But Lisel hoped she would not. It would be like growing out of herself. Like growing out of life.

  Marta plucked at Lisel’s sleeve. “Come away from the window. What would Papa say if he found you in the dark, staring at strange men in the street?”

  On cue, their father rounded the street corner and started down the block toward the apartment house. “I suppose we are about to find out,” Lisel said.

  Joseph Spann carried himself with the vigor and briskness instilled by years of military service—his back straight, shoulders squared, every movement precise. Lisel could almost hear the quick snap of his footsteps on the cobbles as he came nearer the dark, shadowed side of the street.

  “He will walk right past them,” Lisel said, and a sudden chill settled in her chest. On a night like this, a week ago, Kurt Heidemann, the boy upstairs, was ambushed and beaten in the dark. Lisel’s dread quickened as her eyes followed her father’s smart pace down the street.

  Even in the humidity and heat of the August evening, Papa insisted on wearing his one remaining good suit, the gray jacket buttoned across the matching vest, the tiny clip with decorations from the World War on his lapel, the knotted tie, the creased trousers, now a little baggy at the knees, his worn but frequently blocked felt hat.

  In another minute he would step into the blackness where the three men waited for something or someone in the dark.

  Suppose those men waited for her father? Her father, who defended with valor the fatherland in the last war. Her father, who, five years ago, gave up position and wealth to join the Mormon Church and whose greatest desire was to take his family to the temple of the Lord to be sealed together for eternity. For what cause would men lie in wait for a man like her father?

  The answer sprang from the fear that gripped Lisel’s heart like an icy hand. There was no just cause. Kurt’s crime had been that he refused to join the local Hitler’s Youth organization. These things happened, and no one dared openly discuss or condemn them. But it would not happen to her father. Not if Lisel could help it. She tore back the draperies and jerked at the window latch. It jammed.

  “What are you doing?” an astonished Marta demanded.

  “We have to warn him!” Desperately, Lisel gripped the latch and pulled. Her fingernails tore as the tiny mechanism creaked free.

  “You goose!” Marta cried in a rare outburst. She grasped Lisel’s arms and dragged her away from the window. Her brown eyes shone as points of light in the dark. “How do you think Papa will react to having his youngest daughter shouting down the street to him? He will put you on bread and water until you have no teeth to chew with!”

  Lisel tried to free herself. “But those men. Papa—”

  “Papa can take care of Papa. Besides, if you call out, those men will hear you. They will wonder why you warn him. They will be suspicious of Papa and us too.” Marta’s argument made sense. But then, Marta always made sense.

  Lisel stopped struggling.

  “Come. Look.” Marta pulled Lisel back to the window, and the sisters leaned close to the pane so their breath mingled and clouded on the glass.

  Unsuspecting, Papa approached the shadows. Lisel saw his head turn and his shoulders hunch slightly in surprise. The shadows wavered. Her father’s footsteps slowed and faltered. Then he raised his arm in a stiff salute. Lisel held her breath; she could almost hear his reluctant, “Heil Hitler.” His arm came down, and he resumed his normal, brisk gait, crossing the street to the front of their apartment house. He disappeared from her view as he strode up the front steps. And still the men across the street remained in darkness.

  Lisel let out a long breath.

  “You see?” Marta said, “It was nothing.”

  Lisel’s surge of relief was replaced by a prickle of resentment. Being shown not only wrong but foolish and impulsive by her older sister rankled. Lisel drew away from Marta. “You did not have to call me a goose,” she protested. “And it could have been something. Those men could be SA or SS. Have you forgotten what happened to Kurt last week?”

  The living room door clicked and swung open. Papa stood in the doorway. “Marta? Lisel?”

  “Just a minute, Papa.” Marta dashed to turn on the lamp.

  Papa’s heavy gray brows drew together in a frown. “What are you doing in the dark?”

  Lisel rushed toward him. “Oh, Papa, we were so worried about those men on the street!”

  His frown deepened. “There are no men on the street,” he replied and turned away from Lisel, carefully hanging his hat on the peg behind the door and smoothing his gray hair.

  “But we saw them, down there in the shadows.” Lisel declared, confused by her father’s denial. “You walked right—”

  Marta cut Lisel off in midsentence with a quick poke in her back.

  Surprised, Lisel whirled on her sister. But Marta silenced her with a sharp look of warning.

  Papa, ignoring the altercation, had settled in his favorite chair in the corner of the room, adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses, and was scowling at the front page of the Volkishcher Beobachter. The headlines screamed, “Chaos in Poland! Polish Soldiers Push to Edge of German Border! German Families Flee Polish Monsters!”

  Lisel frowned. Why did the newspapers and radio broadcasts continue to make such reports? They made everyone on the streets, in the shops, and even in the classrooms, ask, “Will we have war again?” Hitler said he would handle this new crisis just like he did the last one. Hitler said there would be no war. Everyone knew the Fuhrer did not want war at all. So why did the newspapers and radios continue to whip the German people into such a fever?

  “Lisel?”

  Lisel blinked and looked up at Marta.

  Her older sister smiled knowingly. “Spinning dreams again?”

  Lisel straightened her shoulders. “I was not. I was thinking about the state of the world,” she replied.

  “I wish you were thinking about helping me with dinner,” Marta said and handed Lisel a stack of plates for the table.

  Lisel pulled a face but took the plates.

  Marta lifted the lid from a black iron pan. Steam billowed up from the contents, carrying with it the spicy aroma of smoked pork sausages. “The rain kept the lines at the butcher’s short today,” she said, “and Herr Schmidt found some nice fat sausages for us.”

  Lisel glanced at her father. He liked nothing better than a good sausage. But he seemed not to have heard Marta’s remark. Papa had refolded the newspaper, unread, and laid it aside. He took his well-worn Bible from its place on the table next to his chair and opened it in his lap. With his index finger, he absently riffled the top right corner of the pages.

  “And the garden still has a good growth of green beans, thanks to Kurt. That boy can do miracles with a handful of seeds. With Lisel as his assistant, of course,” Marta added with a brief smile of acknowledgement to Lisel.

  Lisel wrinkled her nose. She hated working in the garden more than she hated setting the table. She laid out the place settings, watching her father as she worked. In a characteristic habit that showed his disquiet, Papa’s mouth curved down beneath his wide gray mustache. He turned the thin pages of the scriptures inattentively, as though searching them but with some preoccupation that kept him from reading.

  “The bread was no good today, though,” Marta continued from the kitchen. “The baker said that though the Fuhrer ordered the wheat harvest to be in before the end of August, the bakery had only received half its regular quota, and it was of very poor quality. I think he may have mixed sawdust into the flour again.”

  Perhaps the news from the Polish border upset Papa, or perhaps the men on the street troubled him more than he would admit. His silence unnerved Lisel, and she struggled for a remark that would distract him from whatever clouded his thoughts. “We are having poppy seed cake for dinner tonight,” she ventured.

  Papa lifted his head and looked at Lisel, his brows rising.

  “Marta had to use half our sugar rations for it,” Lisel continued gamely, remembering the way Marta had poked her in the back.