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The German invasion

December 10th, 2008 Lesley - Central

Award-winning Welch poet Owen Sheers’ debut novel, Resistance, is an alternative history of the Second World War.  The story opens in the fall of 1944 after the German invasion of Great Britain.  While Nazi troups are spreading across southern England, after the failure of the Allies at Normandy, a long-planned British Resistance Organisation’s Auxiliary Units Special Duties Section, is set in motion. 

One morning a group of women in the remote Olchon Valley on the Welch border awaken to find their husbands gone to join the Resistance.  Left to manage the work of tending crops and animals alone as the winter sets in, the women soon encounter five German soldiers in the valley on a secret mission.  English-speaking Captain Albrecht Wolfram has grown skeptical of the Nazi party teachings and views this location as a safe haven from the war.  The soldiers and women soon face a severe blizzard , an event which isolates the valley from the outside world while bringing them closer together. 

Eventually the War arrives in the valley but not before several friendships have formed between the Welch women and German soldiers.  Based on little known events of the British resistance and the author’s extensive research, this novel also includes rich details of the beautiful Welch landscape and customs.

Entry Filed under: Historical Fiction