Price: $ 16.95
ISBN: 9781942078395 (paperback)
eBook: $ 5.99
Page Count: 248
Fiction
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Reviews
The best historical fiction effortlessly transports you to another time and place. Karlin creates a love story between Peter and Grete, rich in complication and heartbreak, which will grab you from the beginning and keep you guessing until the end. And maybe best of all, you'll never again walk through New York's Grand Central Terminal and not wonder about its secretive, subterranean backstory.
—Amanda M. Fairbanks, author of The Lost Boys of Montauk
Eve Karlin’s new book goes deep, from the German U-boat that brings four conscripted saboteurs to a Long Island beach in 1942 to the complex inner lives of her compelling characters. You have to read the book to learn the purpose and subterranean Manhattan location of Track 61, but it’s a journey well worth taking. You will learn remarkable historical facts, wonder often whether the line between good and evil is as clear as you thought, and always feel the power of love. “Track 61” is a rich and satisfying book that brings to life an historical anecdote that many have heard. Karlin took the time to reflect on the story, study it, meld it with her family’s raw experience, and present it to us fully imagined and deftly told.
—Marian E. Lindberg, author of Scandal on Plum Island:
A Commander Becomes the Accused
www.marianlindberg.com
The fascinating story of two Germans who meet by chance in New York, Track 61, is a fictionalized tale of the little known Nazi landing in the Hamptons. Grete, the heroine of the book, is brave, impulsive and in light of everything she has seen in her life, hopeful. When she meets Peter, who may or may not be a friend or an ally, she embarks upon a mission that leaves her conflicted between her heart and her heritage. Track 61 is a well-crafted and sensitive story of love, courage, and the harshness of war. Karlin has succeeded in transporting the reader back to those dark days of World War II, and reminds us that optimism springs eternal.
Trust is risky.
Midnight, June 13, 1942: Peter Burger stands on a foggy beach, ears primed as a submarine hull scrapes the sandy sea bottom. He has endured seventeen months in a Gestapo prison and seventeen days on a Nazi U-boat only to have landed on American shores with six boxes of explosives and no escape.
After slipping into New York City, Peter finds himself at a massive military parade where he meets Grete Baum, a German-Jewish refugee grappling with loneliness and loss. Grete is drawn to Peter’s brooding vulnerability and the pair instantly bond. But as Grete uncovers the truth about Peter and his secret mission ten stories below Grand Central Terminal, she finds herself tackling moral decisions with life-threatening consequences.
Do national borders determine good and evil? Who is a hero, and who is a traitor?
Inspired by the Nazi saboteurs who landed in Amagansett, Long Island in the summer of 1942, Track 61 is a World War II spy thriller that seeks justice for those caught on the wrong side of history.
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- GIFTED HISTORICAL MYSTERY AUTHOR: Track 61 is based off the 2,967-page trial transcript from the Nazi Saboteur Military Tribunal, declassified in the 1960s, the lead saboteur’s memoir, Operation Pastorius: Eight Nazi Spies against America (1959), and Karlin’s own personal history.
- MOST SPINE-TINGLINGLY: To this day, the morning of August 8, 1942, remains the largest mass execution of prisoners in the United States, as well as the fastest.
- SECOND MOST SPINE-TINGLINGLY: The beach where the Nazi saboteurs first stepped onto American Shores was virtually in front of the house where Karlin grew up.
- AMAZING CONTEMPORARY IMPLICATIONS: On November 13, 2001, when President George W. Bush authorized the creation of a military tribunal to try those who assisted in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he relied extensively on the military tribunal established by FDR in 1942 to try the Nazi saboteurs, “Denying Certain Enemies Access to the Courts of the United States.” The men were wearing regular suits when arrested (not military uniforms) which could make them civilians to be tried in a civil court—or spies who deserved fewer rights than prisoners of war.
- LITTLE KNOWN FACT: Track 61 still exists today. Some believe it serves as a secret escape route for presidents visiting New York City and that an unmarked brass door on 49th Street next to the Waldorf-Astoria’s parking garage is proof that someone is still using the track.
- A GHOST STORY WITH A TWIST: The executed men were buried in a paupers’ grave, but in the truest sense, their lives ended the moment they stepped onto American sand. A plaque outside the Amagansett Coast Guard Station reads:…On the night of June 12-13, 1942, it was from this station that Coast Guardsman John Cullen, on beach patrol, encountered a group of four Nazi Saboteurs who had just landed from a German U-boat.
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