In FATE OF ANGELS, Harrison weaves the exciting and moving tales of two young women: an American drawn into a plan to thwart Hitler and a Czech spy forced by the unthinkable to stop her at all costs. Inspired by a family connection to two American sisters sailing aboard the ill-fated Athenia the night it was sunk by a German U-boat, Harrison endeavors to imagine the story behind one of World War Two’s most confounding and unanswered questions: Why did Germany choose to fire on a passenger liner hours after war was declared—killing 117 civilians—and why did they deny any and all responsibility for the attack?

 

For recent college grads, Catherine McLean and her kid sister, Louisa, the threat of another war in Europe means cutting short their grand tour of the continent and finding safe passage back to America. No more crisscrossing Europe to admire the architecture; no more connecting with history; no more taking in the sights; no more nights out sipping sophisticated cocktails, dancing, and turning heads. But when Max Vahle, an agent of the German resistance (and a shameless flirt), approaches Catherine in a Budapest nightclub and entrusts her with a frame of top-secret microfilm, she becomes the target of Nazi spies who will stop at nothing to safeguard Hitler’s darkest secret.

 

One of these spies—a conscripted deep-cover agent working out of London called Vera Dreyfus—has just killed the son of an MI6 agent who threatened to expose her. Now she is ordered to follow Catherine and Louisa to Scotland and seize the microfilm using all necessary force. But when she realizes there are two British detectives hot on her trail, she evades capture by accompanying the Americans aboard the British liner Athenia. Within hours of Great Britain declaring war on Germany, Athenia is caught in the crosshairs of history by a U-boat hellbent on sinking her. When the first torpedo strikes, what begins as an epic struggle for survival in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic leads to a series of shocking and deadly confrontations both at sea and on land.

 

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​Author's Note

 

FATE OF ANGELS was inspired by a family connection to a little-known chapter in World War II history. My wife’s grandmother was twenty-three years old when her tour of Europe in the summer of 1939 was cut short by tragedy. Her harrowing ordeal aboard Athenia the night it was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat—the first shot fired in the war—is the central event around which this novel is constructed. FATE OF ANGELS features a supporting cast of historical figures with names as familiar to readers as King George VI, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Reinhard Heydrich, Joseph Goebbels, and a twenty-two-year-old John F. Kennedy. Set in Budapest, Southampton, London, Glasgow, and the icy waters of the North Atlantic, FATE OF ANGELS imagines an answer to two questions that have puzzled historians for generations: Why was Nazi Germany’s first target in World War II a civilian passenger liner? And why, when called to account for their actions, did they deny any and all responsibility?​

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Lori Galvin

Aevitas Creative Management