Anika Scott lives with her husband and two daughters in Essen, Germany, where her debut novel is set. She grew up in Michigan, USA and has degrees in International Politics and Journalism. She began her career wanting to be a CIA agent and had security clearance from an internship at the State Department in Washington, but CIA applications included never being able to write stories or keep a diary. Anika loves stories too much for that, and so became a journalist instead. She was staff on the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chicago Tribune before becoming a freelance journalist in Germany- her work has appeared widely in the US and European media. She runs an online resource about post-war German history at www.postwargermany.com
What a great debut! It still haunts me, days after finishing it. Meticulously researched and plotted like a noir thriller, The German Heiress tells a different story of WWII - of characters grappling with their own guilt and driven by the question of what they could have done to change the past. I felt as though I was walking through the rubble of Essen and shivering in the bitter cold right alongside Clara Falkenberg. In this haunting and atmospheric novel, Anika Scott delivers a nuanced and emotional look at the often un-talked about side of WWII - the devastation of German towns and cities and the weight of conscience on those who remain. [It's] is a powerful reminder that no one gets out unscathed. Fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz will be fascinated by Scott's portrayal of post-war Germany. * Woman * The German Heiress is the kind of novel we need now more than ever. Set in Germany, eighteen months after the war, reckonings of every sort are playing out and Anika Scott deftly builds a world in which all the shades of gray--Nazi collaboration and complicity among civilians--are brought to life. The German Heiress achieves what the best historical fiction can, asking us to see the past, and then pushing us to see ourselves in that past, demanding: Who would you have been then? What would you have done? Unflinching and absorbing does not let you look away.