Für Elise: A Novel by Mark Splitstone

Gold Medal Winner, Historical Fiction: Romance -- 2026 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) He survived the POW camp by holding onto hope. She survived the war by letting it go. In 1956, more than a decade after the end of World War II, Hans Becker is finally released from a Soviet POW camp and returns to Germany. The reunion is disheartening—his beloved Dresden is largely blackened rubble, and his feelings of disorientation and melancholy hinder his attempt to revive the life—and love—he left behind. Elise, the once delicate teenager whose memory Hans carried in his heart, has, through unspeakable trauma, transformed into a strong, independent woman skeptical of love. Yet just as she and Hans can spot traces of splendor in the ruins and oppression of Iron Curtain–era Dresden, so they each can see flashes of what attracted them to their long-ago sweetheart. But they—and their world—have changed so much. Are they willing to risk everything to seek a new beginning?