Welcome friend! Today I am joining Random Things Tour for the historical fiction, Earthly Creatures by Stevie Davies. In this post, learn about the book and the author and read a short expert from the opening pages. Let’s dive in:
Earthly Creatures
A riveting, epic historical novel set in 1940’s Germany.
For all her life, idealistic 20-year-old bookworm Magdalena Arber has been split down the veering wildly between fidelity to indoctrinated Nazi beliefs, and her father’s humanist values. Then comes the summons–the Nazi War Labour Service is conscripting her into a teaching position in East Prussia. Magda is elated. It’s a release from the cosy cage of childhood, and a chance to form young minds.
She enters a lush rural world of forests, lakes, and meadows where order prevails. Yet there are monstrous hands out to shape the whole continuum of earthly creatures. The Gestapo are a lurking darkness. There is bombing further East, and news of a moving Russian front. Will Alt Schönbek burn as well? Can Magda survive?
Learn more on Goodreads.
About Stevie Davies
Stevie Davies is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at Swansea University. She has published widely in the fields of fiction, literary criticism, biography and popular history. Her work has been longlisted for the Booker and Orange Prizes and has won The Fawcett Society Prize and The Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year award. Her novel The Web of Belonging (1997) was adapted as a Channel 4 television film. Her novel The Element of Water (2001) was long-listed for the Booker and Orange Prizes and won the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year in 2002. Stevie has three children who are the joy of her life. She is a cyclist and sea-swimmer.
Book Excerpt from
Earthly Creatures
PRELUDE
East Prussia, 1944
Wild geese are rushing through the night, With shrill cry northwards faring. Danger awaits! Take care your flight! The world is full of murder.
Walter Flex, 1916
Storks, in their thousands, prepared to abdicate their high thrones. They peered down from chimney stacks and churches. Raising their heads, the creatures clattered their bills, spread huge wings, rose and soared in circles above the villages of East Prussia.
It was time, it was high time: the birds must abandon Europe without delay. So immemorial wisdom dictated, but with fresh urgency, for the storks could see from their vantage point what the human herd below avoided: Russia surging across the map from east to west. Southwards the flocks prepared to migrate, over the shrinking German Empire, across Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, cruising above the Bosporus to ride the thermals over Egypt, and follow the Nile down to the safety of breeding grounds in Africa.
Everywhere Magdalena Arber wandered, that halcyon summer and early autumn, she came across folk staring upwards, ruminating. You could hear what they did not say: Will you ever return home, beloved creatures? Shall we? In that peaceful season, the lush pastures of East Prussia had never seemed as fruitful. The villagers continued to eat their fill, while Europe famished. Wading through waves of green, Magdalena felt faint earth tremors: the reverberation of a distant earthquake. On the main arteries, a westward trickle of refugees became a denser flow.
Now along the river valleys trekked strange cattle, driven east to west, breeds no one had seen before. In their thousands the animals gathered on the plains. On no account go near them, Magdalena was warned: these beasts are not a herd, you see, they’re unrelated to one another. They’ve reverted and are wild animals now: they’ll take you for an enemy. The cattle stampeded through the land, trod down fences, broke into gardens and stripped bushes and trees.
Uneasy news travelled by word of mouth, east to west. Border towns – Memel, Tilsit, Schirwindt – had been burned and bombed to ash. The rumble of distant artillery troubled your dreams; the eastern horizon glowed blood-red. The Russian front was coming, Stalin was coming! Terrified villagers abandoned their homes to join the flood of migrants…
…only to return and take up where they had left off.
Many thanks to Random Things Tours for giving me a chance to highlight this book on my blog. Check out other reviewers on the tour:
Find other book excerpts here.
Thanks for the blog tour support x