On Thursday, November 13, the Suffield Public Library Foundation is sponsoring a talk at Kent Memorial Library by Gilbert Ahrens, the author of A Delicate Dance, a historical biography based on his family’s experiences in Germany from World War I through World War II. The Suffield Public Library Foundation has sponsored a number of events in the community over the years featuring major figures of their fields, including author Andre Dubus III, musician and author Steve Katz, SHS grad Greg Butler, an Oscar-winning master of visual effects, and SHS grad Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Now, the SPLF is proud to host this discussion with Gilbert Ahrens, a Suffield native whose family and professional experiences have shaped all of the books he has authored, including A Delicate Dance, The Unwritten Playbook, and Shattered, Shaken and Stirred: Reconnecting With What Matters Most After Loss and Adversity.
The author describes A Delicate Dance as a book that “I always wanted to write, that deals with my unique family history,” and which, as he delved into personal and historical research in preparation to write the book, only became more astonishing and dramatic – and quite relevant to historical trends throughout the 20th and 21st century. “After all,” he explains, “I grew up with these events. My mother was born in Germany and came to the U.S. as a small girl, not speaking any English. There were no men in the family who were able to make it to America, because they all had been executed or killed. In many ways, for me this has been a lifelong project.”
A Delicate Dance “starts with Berlin being bombed during World War II, and then it moves to World War I because that first conflict was the genesis of so much that happened in Germany right through to the end of World War II. Once I really got deep into the research, it was clear to me that this could not be a book just about World War II, but World War I was vital to this story and must be part of its narrative.”
From the press release information about the book, “this historical novel follows the lives of an aristocratic German family from the end of World War I through World War II.” Along with examining Hitler’s relatively quick rise to power and the grave threat of Nazism to civilization itself, A Delicate Dance “recounts the courage of those who tried to assassinate Hitler” – including Ahrens’s uncles and grandfather – and whose “failure resulted in their imprisonment and execution.” The book is “told from multiple perspectives, delving into themes of trust, technological change, the dissolution of the aristocracy, and the complex personal journeys of a family caught in the changing tides of history.”
The Suffield Public Library Foundation is hosting this highly anticipated event at Kent Memorial Library on November 13 at 7 p.m. The event is free.