Up the Wooden Hill - Jill Schaefer

Up The Wooden Hill is a 180-page historical memoir about growing up in England and Germany before, during and after World War II, featuring two tales seen through different spectacles. Stories of love and war, tears and laughter, families, friends and foes. From school days fraught with sibling rivalry and controversies with parents, lives are rebuilt, the Deutsch mark revalued and a father de-nazified. Both the young people mentioned in the book learn apprenticeships, experience calf love and the beginning of a postwar world. Comments by Jill's daughter-in-law are: "Often in school we get only a glimpse of the history of the WWII era, as told from U.S. military and political perspectives, but what intrigued me so much about this book is getting the firsthand, slice of life feeling of what it was actually like to be a young person coming of age in this time period. You get to learn not only about the challenges but also the optimism of these two growing up and looking for fun and adventure where-ever they could find it. "The writer takes you back then forward as you grow up with these two people - from once opposing countries - and share in their culture and eventually in their meeting and marrying. For me one of the amazing aspects of this book was not just the wonderful story but also that these were two people's actual lives and the tale told from two perspectives, two cultures and from two countries. I think this book would appeal to people of all ages most specifically from England, Germany, and the U.S. and the writer's style is both candid and engaging."