Buried Pasts – General Book Info

NOTHING STAYS BURIED FOREVER

Even after eighteen years, Canadian pilot Mike Stafford still carries an overpowering sense of guilt for the death of his best friend during a huge RAF bombing raid over Berlin in 1944. He eventually returns to England for a first squadron reunion full of apprehension over what the visit may produce.

Siggi Hoffman, then a young German girl of twenty, also has terrible memories of a personal loss from that same night in 1944. She too is unable to forget. Nor has she ever been able to forgive.

When fate throws these two together in a small north Yorkshire town during the summer of 1962, the past collides devastatingly into the present. And all the time, lurking ominously in the background, is an unknown enemy intent on extracting violent revenge. Private demons are only one of the many problems that must be overcome when Stafford and Siggi find themselves fighting to survive.

As long buried secrets are finally revealed, events reach a literally explosive conclusion.

This is an exact copy of the review that Buried Pasts received from Publishers Weekly when a quarter-finalist in the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

‘A WWII bombing blitz over Berlin sets in motion the well-crafted plot of this sentimental thriller. Mike Stafford is a Canadian flying for England and leading a night bombing mission that ends with a crash landing and the unexpected death of his buddy. Siggi is a German woman whose mother dies during the bombings that same night. Eighteen years later, Siggi is unmarried and hardened by what happened to her, and family man Stafford is heading back to England for a reunion of his old squadron. Fate brings Stafford and Siggi together to share their stories, but lurking behind the scenes is the emotionally disturbed son of Stafford’s dead friend out for revenge. Stafford blames himself for his friend’s death, but is there more to the story than he knows? Despite occasional lapses into melodrama, this page-turner blends suspense with a cast of characters who genuinely care for each other. It’s an engaging and satisfying novel for fans of adventure stories with a heart.’