Product Description: When the Germans invade Belgium in 1940, chemistry professor André Severin fears the worst. His colleagues believe their social and political positions will protect them during the occupation, but André knows better. He has watched Hitler's rise to power and knows the Nazis will do anything to destroy their enemies. For the Severins are Jews, non-practicing, yes, but that won?t matter to the Germans?or to the Belgians desperate to protect themselves by informing on their neighbors. And so André and his brother Alin take their parents, wives, and children and flee south. But when France falls to the Nazis, the refugees are caught in a rural farming community where their only hope for survival is to blend in with the locals. Fortunately, the Severins have come to Huguenot country, settled by victims of religious persecution who risk their own lives to protect the Jewish refugees and defy the pro-Nazi government. And as the displaced family grows to love their new neighbors, André and Alin join forces with the French Resistance to help protect them. Based on one family's harrowing true story of survival, In This Hospitable Land is an inspirational novel about courage and the search for home in the midst of chaos.

Lynmar Brock, Jr.: Very simply I married one of the little girls. For my own family, we arrived in 1620 on the Mayflower and in 1682 with William Penn as he set up Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. Thus I had my family history down very well. But having married a girl from Belgium who arrived in the US in 1950 I was really interested in her family for my own sake and as much as for our two sons. I wanted them to know of their mother's story. That was really important to me. As an aside, our younger son has married a wonderful German girl (woman) and they have two children. And so I am trying to get her history, for now the "soup" thickens and after a couple of hundred years of mostly English/Scot/Irish ancestors (with a German g-g-g grandmother thrown in) the blood lines have been enhanced with all these new genes. Such a benefit. And to the point, as a young person (b. 1934) I did pay attention to the Second World War and knew much of what was going on. I remember specifically D-Day, the invasion of Normandy in 1944. In grade school we all knew what was going on. And so, getting married in 1963, Claudie and I sat down with her father and aunt and uncle and recorded five hours of conversation about the war years. For the first time they were willing to share that which they did not for the rest of the family or others.

Question: How much of the novel is fiction and how much fact? Was it difficult to use factual events in a fictional work?

Lynmar Brock, Jr.: Having gotten the family's story from them in 1969-70, then visiting France to be with the persons who made the survival of the family possible and gather their stories, I was able to assemble a pretty fair story line with dates in which I have some real confidence. And as new information came, I could test it against that which I already knew--the old method of getting two sources for one piece of information.

The events are real, enhanced by the history and printed by the participants following the war and for their own satisfaction. Also, my father-in-law printed several pamphlets at the university, including citing the 500 sheep missing and the fighting at La Riviere. The events are real. The one place where I am not sure that Andre was present was the incident of the killing at Les Puits de Celas. But that event was real. We have visited all the locations cited. It was easier to use factual events and then work on the dialogue. As I have said to others, I don't have their exact dialogue--it was never written down--but I had them say in the novel what I think they should have said. The dialogue is consistent with my knowledge of both the family and the many French who were there, who participated in the events and shared with me/us over a long period of time their feelings and emotions.

Question: You were in the U.S. Military before retiring to civilian life and becoming a businessman. How did your knowledge of military maneuvers influence your writing of this novel?

Lynmar Brock, Jr.: As a result of serving in the peacetime Navy, I know about military practices which I am sure were practiced by the Germans very effectively. Being in the U.S. Navy is not fun and games. It is a serious business. Being at the Pentagon in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations was a very serious business. I was recalled to active duty on our destroyer in 1961 when President Kennedy activated the reserve destroyers as a result of the raising of the Berlin Wall. It gave me a military perspective. And yes, I'm glad nobody was shooting at me during my service.

Question: Can we expect other historical fiction from you? What are you working on now?

Lynmar Brock, Jr.: Yes. I have written an historical novel, Must Thee Fight, the story of a Quaker youth who decided to join the military during the American Revolution against Quaker teachings and principles. I used the tension I faced when I had to decide whether to join the Navy or become a conscientious objector. I joined the military. And the true story is that only one of my Quaker ancestors joined Washington's army or militia. I have written a third novel, historical fiction, Genevieve, of a Navy officer in the Mediterranean Sea in the 1950s on a destroyer, meeting a beautiful French girl on vacation and the interaction between the two and the activity on a ship and the consequences of the relationship. I am now working on a sequel to Must Thee Fight.

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La Font, home in the Cévennes	The children bringing wheat in from the fields	Part of the Sauverin Family: Front: Christel, Christian Ida Back: André, Denise, Alex

Katie, Ida, Christel, Genevieve, and Philippe at La Font	Rose Sauverin, walking up from Solyrols up to La Font	Alex and André shoveling manure

BRUSSELS

May 10, 1940

On what seemed like an ordinary spring day in Brussels, thirty-nine-year-old Professor André Sauverin awoke, rose from his bed, stepped into his small kitchen to start a pot of coffee, then went and opened the single window of this rented room at 172 Chanssee Vleurgat and—as usual—stretched himself fully and took a deep breath. The skies were clear, the temperature mild, and the sun shone brightly, low in the sky, as André gazed east, feeling expansive. He looked forward to his last day of teaching for the week and then his weekend on the coast with his family. Delightfully fresh air poured into the room, scattering dust motes and dispersing the stifling mustiness that had accumulated during the night. But as André relaxed his body, released his breath, and savored the scent of brewing coffee, he realized something was different this morning, something terribly wrong. No birds sang in the park across the way. The world seemed completely, preternaturally still. Wondering at the cause, André leaned out the window and sensed, rather than saw, a vibration which disturbed his visual field. Concentrating, he heard a distant rumbling, soft at first, but steadily rising in volume from a low growl to a terrifying roar.

Squinting against the sun‘s glare, André couldn‘t be certain whether he was actually seeing clusters of dark spots or just floaters in his eyes, until the spots resolved into the shapes of aircraft, formations bearing down upon the suburbs and the city. As he watched, intellectually de-tached but consumed physically with horror and dread, the planes—three to a squadron—kept coming and coming, first speckling the sun, then darkening the sky. Not until one group approached his apartment building and flew overhead could André discern the German crosses on their tails.

Bombs began to drop through the clear sky as the sun glistened on the new green leaves of trees lining august avenues and parks. Munitions fell as if weightless, in stepped ladder-like lines and odd arcs. Columns of smoke and debris rose from the ground like geysers before the concus-sion of explosions caught up with the frightening scene.

Air-raid sirens screamed, an undulating wailing mixing with the grumbling of engines and the slamming of bombs raining down and exploding on impact. André, transfixed, realized that the war he and his family had tried to prepare for without ever really believing it would touch them had actually, inescapably, come to Belgium.

He was thankful that the previous September he had moved his wife and children to Le Coq, a non-strategic summer resort along the North Sea, the same weekend the Germans invaded Poland. His parents followed in January, and finally his brother Alex and his family had left Brussels for Le Coq at the beginning of May. Had he done enough to be ready for war? The question tormented André, and by the light of this day, his torment was much worse.

The banging of doors and yelling in the hallway snapped André out of his reverie. He couldn‘t understand the words his neighbors shouted, but their anxiety was palpable and the sound of their feet thumping rapidly down the stairs required no interpretation.

His instinct for self-preservation finally took hold. He strode into the bathroom and opened the taps to fill the tub as a precaution against the disruption of the municipal water supply, conscientious to implement the government‘s much-publicized civil defense instructions.

Suddenly remembering the pan of water, he hurried into the kitchen to shut off the low flame, then reached for his gray raincoat, always a necessity in the steady drizzle of springtime Brussels.

Buttoning the raincoat up to his neck, he grabbed a chocolate bar off of the kitchen table and jammed it into a pocket. A nearby blast jarred him, shaking the building just enough so that bits of ceiling plaster cracked and fell.

André hurriedly joined the rush of tenants tramping down into the basement.

✡ ✡ ✡

In the crowded vaulted subterranean crypt, the apartment‘s makeshift bomb shelter, a single light bulb dangled from a thin cord swaying back and forth ever so slightly, casting an eerie shifting glow on the heavy dust layering the ledges of the cellar walls and on some two dozen faces. Working long hours during the week at the university, André hadn‘t had a chance to get to know his fellow residents. They held little interest for him anyway.

Everyone was hushed, listening to the muffled distant explosions. Being gathered together provided some comfort, but minute by minute their collective fear grew.

André stood apart hardly looking at the others. He thought some knew him to be a professor, a profession admired and respected by Belgians. But these were all ordinary wage earners, reluctant to start a conversation with a person of his stature. It was fine since he had no wish to speak. He wanted to think.

His eyes may have appeared focused on the bare wood joist framing the underside of the ground-level apartment but they were actually focused inward. He busily pictured bombs descending. Counting the seconds between successive blasts, he calculated—as he would from the intervals between lightning and thunder—the speed of the bombs‘ approach and how much time he and his neighbors might have until the storm of war broke upon them.

Meanwhile Madame Uyttendaele lumbered into the basement. André had never found this overweight concierge pleasant, particularly compared with Madame Jaspart, who had cared for the Sauverins so well during their years at 36 Avenue Émile Duray in the more desirable section of Ixelles. An ugly scowl distended Madame Uyttendaele‘s fold-filled face. Decades of inactivity and overindulgence in the weight-inducing specialties of Belgian cuisine, and not a little of the Belgian ale favored by the Flemish, made her an unwelcome sight.

Madame Uyttendaele pushed her gray, stringy hair away from her sweaty forehead and her weak, watery eyes, and scanned the ashen faces of the tenants. ―Professor Sauverin! I had to turn off the water running into your bath! You wanted the building flooded and more work for me?‖

War has come, André thought. Belgians are dying. Who cares about an overflowing bathtub? But vowing not to lose his composure and to maintain his high standards of conduct and decency—he simply said, ―Thank you for taking care of that,‖ and turned away.

Nervous chatter and awkward bursts of laughter from the others came to an abrupt end as a bomb exploded near enough to disturb the supposedly safe underground chamber. In the silence that followed, all André could hear was choked breathing, rapid and dry and punctuated by the rattle of phlegm deep in his neighbors‘ throats.

Shuddering, he thought of his family again and wondered, Have the Germans attacked along the coast too? They’ve been battling the British in the North Sea since fall…

The awful buzzing of Luftwaffe warplanes and the booming of bombs receded into the distance. Would the all-clear siren sound soon?

André looked around, finally acclimated to the weak light. The others were so slovenly attired—some in nightclothes, most untucked and askew; one without shoes—André realized he too must appear peculiar.

Forced to remain in this uncomfortable cell, André cast about for a way to deploy his mind without edging back into anxiety-ridden territory. He would have tried to solve some equations in his head but he was too rattled for the concentrated logic that such calculations demanded.

Bombs started falling again, seemingly with greater focus and ferocity. The bare bulb began to swing wildly, making their frightened faces, bathed successively in distorting shadow and light, grotesque masks standing out grimly against the rough whitewashed masonry of the dank cave-like walls.

Then the light went out. Even as the noise of the warplanes diminished, everyone in the darkness tensed for a third assault.

Finally the light bulb flickered back on. The others slowly grinned in relief and even began to josh a little. Then a startling shriek violently erupted. Everyone jumped. But the sirens didn‘t signal another attack. It was the all clear, an invitation to come out and discover what remained of the city.

✡ ✡ ✡

A stooped, wizened fellow with short white tufts of hair sticking out stiffly like the dried stalks of a harvested wheat field called tremulously to Madame Uyttendaele, ―Do your duty! March up those stairs and find out if it‘s truly safe for us to leave!‖

Like every concierge, Madame Uyttendaele had been asked by the city fathers to act as a de facto air-raid warden in the event of an attack. She grumbled as she hoisted her bulk slowly out of the basement, laboriously opening the cellar door. She was instantly forced back by an inflow of acrid smoke from a nearby fire, and by the screaming of ambulances and the groaning of fire trucks rushing through the streets.

Undeterred by the smell, the noise or the heat, the huddled apartment-dwellers shielded their eyes and headed toward daylight. André led the way, taking the stairs quickly as was his custom. Thankful to have survived unharmed, he bounded up to his apartment as the others moved out onto the front steps. There they babbled excitedly and proudly of their experience as if not being blown to bits had conferred honor upon them.

Have they nothing better to do at such a time? André wondered. He pushed open his unlocked door, unbuttoned his raincoat, dropped it onto a chair, and considered what he had to attend to, knowing what he must do: resume his normal life, for as long as possible.

He shaved with the usual care not to nick his skin. Then he brushed his thinning brown hair with Roja tonic, an oil with a manly smell tinged with sweetness, sold with the promise of preventing hair loss. Back in his bedroom he pulled on his familiar dark-charcoal trousers with the knife-edge crease, eased his undershirt over his thin body, shifted carefully into his starched white shirt, and fed his shoulders into the loops of his suspenders. At five feet eight inches, his slight build made him look taller, his manner of dress giving him an appearance of severity offset only by his gentle demeanor.

In the bedroom he reached for a tie, ran it under his stiff collar, looped it repeatedly, and carefully centered the dimple of his newly made Windsor knot. He paused momentarily to admire the way the dark blue of the silk shone against the red triangles of a pattern descending to the perfectly matched ends, then shot his French cuffs straight held by the silver cuff links inscribed with his initials, a cherished gift from his parents long ago. He considered with an involuntary shiver how little such precious metal meant compared with the iron and steel of guns, rifles, airplanes, and bombs.

Appraising his appearance in a mirror as he pulled on his vest and suit coat and adjusted the gold chain of his pocket watch, he finally felt fit to face the world and his students—at least those who could make it to the university, as he hoped he would be able to do.

He tramped down the stairs again, possessed by the perverse thought that the Nazis had been cruelly courteous in scheduling their attack early enough for him and his fellow Belgians to get to work almost on time. As he stepped outside he was partially blinded by the smoke-smudged light. He began to worry about the Free University. For the first time he considered the possibility that his beloved institution of higher learning—a bastion of Belgian freedom and a juggernaut of scientific and technological development—had been a target of the bombing.

Scanning left and right through eyes half shut against the painfully bright sunlight that cut through wafting clouds of dust and smoke, André hurried toward the corner for the streetcar he hoped would come. He carefully skirted around a mound of rubble that spilled out into the street. Confused, and with his eyes tearing painfully, he finally realized the façade of the apartment building five doors down from his own had been completely blown away. Grit, ash, and lightweight debris swirled through the air above the disaster, slowly settling onto the accumula-tion of crumbled stone, wood, and plaster.

A half-dozen men frantically heaved bricks and timber aside. How awful if anyone was buried in that gigantic pile of debris! André felt a powerful impulse to lend a hand but couldn‘t, concerned not so much about encountering a dead body but to become nauseous in seeing blood.

Relief workers shouted encouragement to each other and called down into the still-smoldering wreckage, seeking an answering cry. Then their shouting stopped.

André watched fearfully as several men cautiously shifted masonry to lift out a form and lay it gently on the adjacent pavement. The victim‘s grime-covered limbs had gone gray and were hideously distorted by death. The rescuers gazed wordlessly as the lifeless body grew cold. The poor man‘s hair, oiled and precisely parted down the middle mere minutes before, was now rudely, almost clownishly, disarranged. His formerly immaculate white shirt was stained bright red with blood still seeping from the wound.

Glancing up and away from death, André saw that the façade‘s fall had left four stories of private rooms open to the sky. Disturbed furniture and sad-looking personal possessions jumbled by the force of the bomb‘s direct hit were plainly, painfully public.

On the third floor, the staring eyes of an elderly baldheaded man in an old-fashioned armchair seemed to take in the haphazard devastation casually. Why had he failed to evacuate the premises as all citizens had been instructed to do in the event of an air raid? It doesn’t matter anymore, André thought gloomily. The old man‘s eerie immobility stated clearly that he too was dead.

✡ ✡ ✡

At last the street car rounded the corner onto the Avenue Louise. Hastening up its steps André was amazed that the public transport was still running as if the bombing were a temporary inconvenience rather than a death-dealing portent of still more horror to come. As André took a seat, a surge of thoughts and feelings washed over him as if a moment‘s relaxation allowed the flood to breach some protective dam.

Gazing out the window, traffic was lighter than usual but cars still honked as street-corner crowds of stunned, disbelieving Belgians gathered as if together they could dispel the attack‘s implications. Unusually large numbers of army trucks, their military horns blaring relentlessly, raced along the broad avenues connecting Brussels‘s neighborhoods. Ambulances also appeared more frequently than ordinarily, their singsong sirens sounding altered since the previous day—more urgent and desperate. Fat columns of smoke rose in the distance, filtering into the gray-orange haze blanketing the city as munitions stored in bombed armories continued to explode.

―But Belgium is neutral!‖ one of André‘s fellow streetcar passengers lamented.

How naive that sounded. How could anyone believe the government‘s protestations of neutrality would protect Belgium any more today than they had during the ―war to end all wars,‖ when the country had been occupied? Hadn‘t these people noticed the military going into full alert one month earlier? No. They believed what they wanted to believe.

André had taken no more comfort from the mobilization than from official assurances that Fort Eben-Emael was impregnable and would keep the Germans east of the great waterways of the Meuse River and the Albert Canal—natural lines of defense against invading foot soldiers.

Self-satisfied bureaucrats and the parroting press insisted that the capital and the rest of Belgium would be safe. André knew better.

Listening to others state that Luxembourg and Holland had also been invaded that morning, André clenched his teeth convulsively. So the Germans had learned from their mistakes. In the last war they had left the Dutch to their own devices, closing off a major avenue for attack and escape. Not this time. This time the Sauverins wouldn‘t be able to seek safe haven as they had before, in the Netherlands.

André could only suppose that the misery of the last war was about to happen again, except this time it would be infinitely worse, especially for Jews, practicing or not. Anti-Semitism had played no part in the previous German hostilities. Now it seemed central, with an evil and unjust intensity.

Reaching with his long, tapered fingers, André gently removed his plain, round, horn-rimmed glasses and rubbed his clear gray eyes. Though secular he was still part of a large Jewish family, a major concern that gnawed at his subconscious and occasionally surfaced, as now when he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the tram‘s window.

With his soft unmarked hand he felt along an aquiline nose distinguished by just the hint of a Roman bump. Ordinarily that bump didn‘t bother him in the slightest, but today he couldn‘t help wondering, Do others see it as Jewish? Though he had never done anything to obscure his heritage he had never done anything to call attention to it either. Could its concealment possibly prove a matter of life or death?

The tram passed the German embassy and André once more saw, parked in the compound, trucks marked ―Bayer‖ and ―Blaupunkt.‖ He had first taken note of them immediately after April‘s attacks on Denmark and Norway, but did not understand then why the sight of the vehicles had disquieted him. Now he realized they might not have been delivering aspirin and radios. They may have contained war materials—the first wave of the German invasion.

As he approached his stop, André rose and worked his way through the cluster of passengers. Oh, how he wished he could be with the rest of his family on this frightening morning! At least Alex was there to care for and comfort their two wives, four children, and aging parents. Alighting on the sidewalk André saw people scurrying to shops, work, and school. Most were dressed and behaving as they customarily would. The university was open for education, providing reassurance and reminding him he had to get to class. As he entered through the great gates, André knew he ought to make contact with his family soon. The news of the Brussels bombing must have reached Le Coq by then. But he had no time now. He would call later if the telephone service hadn‘t been disrupted.

Inside the university, professors and students proceeded at a fevered pace. André hastened to his laboratory-classroom, peered through the door‘s small glass pane, and was gratified to find his students hard at work. As he stepped inside they stopped talking and eyed him unnervingly. Ritualistically, he slipped out of his suit jacket and into his long white lab coat.

Purpose and routine soothed him. As always, he marveled at the institution he had loved since his own student days and now as an assistant professor and head of the analytical chemistry laboratory at the university that had educated him. He was proud to have long embraced and been nourished by the Free University‘s tradition of unfettered intellectual pursuit, which dated back to its founding in 1834, three years after the nation‘s birth. Breaking with the educational paradigm of Belgium‘s older Catholic colleges, the Free University had played a significant role in the development of one of Europe‘s first democratic states, a parliamentary monarchy in which freedom both of expression and religion reigned. view abbreviated excerpt only...

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