A World Elsewhere

June 30, 2014
Drawing from a collection of letters and diary entries given to her by her mother, MacRae’s thought-provoking chronicle of her parents’ experiences during WWII offers the perspective of ordinary people as historic events tamper with their lives. MacRae gets to know her mother as a young woman, the father she never met, and her own place in history. Her mother, Aimée, born to a wealthy Connecticut family, forgoes college to travel the world, and she meets Heinrich, a penniless Russian baron exiled by the Bolsheviks, in 1920s Paris. A slew of letters reveals their blossoming romance and marriage, and the couple settle on a farm north of Berlin. But when the Great Depression hits and unforeseen troubles cause their resources to dwindle, Heinrich volunteers for the German army during WWII and is killed on Russian front. And so, even though leaving Germany is forbidden, Aimée and her six young children start a long and difficult journey to ghetto America. The letters and diary entries, MacRae finds, are full of youthful questions and hopes that turned to pensive fears and detailed descriptions of the horrors of war. While the substance of MacRae’s historical account is fascinating, many passages are overwritten.. Agent: Robin Straus, the Robin Straus Agency

July 1, 2014
An American woman's marriage to a Baltic German noble in 1928 promised a fairy tale but ended in a nightmare of war.New York City-based author MacRae (co-author: Alliance of Enemies: The Untold Story of the Secret American and German Collaboration to End World War II, 2006) is the daughter of now-deceased Aimee Ellis of Hartford, Connecticut, a wealthy young orphan swept off her feet by a handsome descendant of the Teutonic knights once closely allied with the Russian czars; his elaborate name was Baron Heinrich Alexis Nikolai von Hoyningen-Huene. A polyglot with impeccable manners and education, Heinrich was ambitious as well as irresistible; he and Aimee met while on holiday in France in 1927, when Heinrich was studying international law and economics. Aimee had studied art in New York rather than attend college, and when the couple married the next year, she was several months pregnant. The couple made a home on a big farm in a town about 100 miles outside Berlin, during the painful period of crisis and unemployment in 1930s Germany. Heinrich had the right stuff for the rising new Nazi regime: military lineage, Aryan pedigree, an attachment to the land, and a large, growing family. Although thwarted in his professional ambitions and attempting to settle down as a gentleman farmer, he joined the Nazi party and was mobilized and eventually sent to participate in Operation Barbarossa, where a sniper killed him at Mogilev on July 23, 1941. Aimee, left pregnant with their sixth child, had to soldier on under terrible conditions, fleeing her town when it fell under the Russian sector; she eventually brought her children back to America in several trips. Using her parents' letters written during this devastating time, MacRae does a fine job of portraying the fear and uncertainty felt by her mother, living in a strange land and torn by loyalties.One of the more curious World War II entanglements, deftly fashioned.

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