The Widening Gyre

A guilty secret haunts young widow Else as she tries to drown her conscience among the glittering lights of 1920s Berlin. Else’s husband August returned from the Great War shattered in mind and body. Soon after, she finds herself a widow. Her best friend Hans, a gay man who also lost his partner in the war, joins her on a mission to disappear. There’s no work to be found in the devastated economy, nothing for them to build. But dance parties, cabarets, and hallucinatory nightclubs fill the tormented streets of the Weimar Republic, beacons in the night. Hans introduces Else to Mae, a sophisticated bonne vivante who teaches Else new ways to forget. But as inflation rises and the social order crumbles, Else finds that her dark secrets refuse to be blotted out. At last, she must reckon with her ghosts–or let Mae’s treacherous friendship destroy everything that is left of her.