Wolf's Hook

Book excerpt: It was a sunny Saturday lunchtime in June 1944. Most of the inhabitants of a sleepy village situated in the 'Free Zone' of war-ravaged France were sitting down to a leisurely meal. Without warning, an attachment of Das Reich soldiers (the elite force of the Nazi's Waffen-SS division) arrived. Hours later, 642 defenceless people had been massacred; their homes were smouldering ruins. From these embers emerged life-affirming stories of survival as individuals defied machine-guns, snipers, explosives and burning buildings to escape the clutches of the deadly Wolf's Hook (the Das Reich emblem). Wolf's Hook is a factionalised account of the Das Reich attack on a hillside village. It recaptures the essence of what happened that day, using four first-person narrative strands: a waiter, a young boy, an SS soldier and a grandmother. Through their eyes we see the terrifying day unravel. Not suitable for readers under 12.