Furtwangler's Grave

16-17 November 1973: having finally withdrawn from Vietnam and abandoned illegal carpet-bombings of ostensibly neutral Cambodia, the United States continues staring the Soviet Union down over the still-unsettled Yom Kippur War in the Middle East; Secretary of State Henry Kissinger - having apparently encouraged the overthrow and murder of Salvador Allende by the Chilean military - has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Spiro Agnew has resigned the Vice Presidency in criminal disgrace; and Richard Nixon is battling to save his political career against charges he participated in a failed, third-rate burglary attempt at the Watergate complex. During a typical Friday morning and afternoon at the Mannheim Stockade, in west-central Germany, Army MP Sergeant Alf P. Bergson, a Vietnam veteran working as a Social Work/Psychology Specialist, deals with a schizophrenic prisoner in maximum security and the consequences of a rape in medium security, the evening before. After work, he visits a discotheque downtown, meeting both a middle-aged German veteran of the Russian Front and a charming young Gypsy, whose entire extended family was nearly exterminated during the Holocaust. The next morning, he walks through historic Rhine Valley landscapes to a ruined 12th-century castle in the mountains above Weinheim: reflecting on his own tour in Vietnam, his father's experiences in the Second World War, and current prospects for citizens of the United States - and the world. In the afternoon, he arrives in the nearby ancient university town of Heidelberg, looking for someone he met there some weeks earlier, during a Temporary Duty Assignment at the 130th Station Hospital. What he discovers about that young soldier's subsequent fate - and possible consequences of his own recent actions - leads to a major crisis of faith and yet more unsettling revelations. For more information, please visit http://www.opus95.com/heidelberg/Bergfriedhof.htm This book is also available in a German translation: Furtwänglers Grab: Novelle