L. Annette Binder was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States as a small child. THE VANISHING SKY, her first novel, is inspired by events from her family history.

Her father was required to serve in the Hitler Youth. Family lore has it he ran away from his post near the end of the war.

Annette's father died when she was 16, and writing THE VANISHING SKY gave her the chance to imagine the stories he didn't get to tell her.

Annette holds degrees from Harvard, Berkeley and Harvard Law School. She has an MFA from the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine. Her story collection RISE (Sarabande 2012) received the Mary McCarthy Prize, and her stories have appeared in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the O. Henry Prize Anthology and Public Radio's Selected Shorts. She lives in New England with her husband and daughter.

Books by L. Annette Binder

The Vanishing Sky

by L. Annette Binder - Fiction, Historical Fiction

In 1945, as the war in Germany nears its violent end, the Huber family is not yet free of its dangers or its insidious demands. Etta, a mother from a small, rural town, has two sons serving their home country: her elder, Max, on the Eastern front, and her younger, Georg, at a school for Hitler Youth. When Max returns from the front, Etta quickly realizes that something is not right --- he is thin, almost ghostly and behaving very strangely. She strives to protect him from the Nazi rule, even as her husband, Josef, becomes more nationalistic and impervious to Max's condition. Meanwhile, miles away, Georg has taken his fate into his own hands, deserting his young class of battle-bound soldiers to set off on a long and perilous journey home.