Hummel's Cross

German-born Erich Hummel, a retired concert pianist who has lived in London since the end of World War II, receives a mysterious visitor to his flat. An American reporter has traveled across the Atlantic to question him about his other life...not the life of a musician but rather his days as a deadly Luftwaffe fighter pilot in the violent skies over Europe where the life expectancy of a German flier by war's end was measured in hours. Although Erich insists that his war story has already been told in his little known memoir and that he is just an aged musician now, the journalist, Rachael Azaria, senses there is more to his tale. But before she reveals her true reasons behind the curious visit, she must first confirm that the Erich Hummel she is interviewing is indeed the man she believes him to be. And so Erich takes Rachael back to the dark days of Nazi Germany where he evolves from a sheltered youth whose pre-war passion is music not politics into a reluctant but skilled fighter ace, earning the coveted Iron Cross decoration for valor, pinned on him by Adolf Hitler himself. We follow him in his personal struggle to survive the war from the Bavarian Alps, to the Russian steppe, into the deadly skies over Western Europe, and ultimately back to Germany again. As he fights for his life in intense combat against ever more powerful American and British air armadas, a series of events on the ground will compel him to make the most important decision of his young life. One that could ultimately pit him against his own countrymen in a desperate quest to do right amidst a world gone terribly wrong. In the end Erich may have to risk it all for the sake of his friends, his family, and the love of his soul-mate, Marina Oesau--whom Erich will discover is braver than any soldier on any front. Hummel's Cross is a war story. A love story. A history of the great cataclysm of the 20th Century that engulfed an entire continent. One in which millions of innocents perished simply because of who they were. Yet some survived due to the courage of those whose compassion ultimately overcame their fears.