Set in 1944-45 (September through June), this debut novel asks the question "What if." What if the Allied invasion of Normandy failed... What if England was invaded... What if a resistance movement in England was activated... What if your survival depended on the enemy?... These questions and more are explored in this gripping novel.

Sheers heard about plans for a British resistance organization while working for a builder in Llanthony valley. The builder talked about how during World War II, farmers in the area were given caches of arms that they hid in underground bunkers in the hills. If the order came, the farmers were to leave their homes and wives and take to the hills to resist the German army. Years later, Sheers was reminded of this story after hearing an interview with a farmer who had been recruited into the Auxiliary Units Special Duties Section - which was a network of farmers, vicars, and other locals trained and prepared to run messages and spy on the occupying German force. Sheers tells the story through the eyes of Sarah and Maggie, two of the wives left behind, Albrecht - the captain of the war-weary German patrol, and George, a member of the resistance.

In a very isolated valley in Wales, six families farm, raise sheep and their families. The Allied invasion of Normandy has failed and the Germans have invaded England. One September morning in 1944, five women wake up alone. Their men have left them - with no warning and left no message behind. Shocked, numb, but determined - the women take care of the sheep, worked the farm and did everything alone. Within a few weeks of the men leaving, a patrol of six German soldiers come into the valley and take over one of the empty houses. They were on a secret mission from the SS - observation and searching out the resistance and a map. In the nearest town, a young man named George - not conscripted in to the British army due to deafness in his left ear - was a part of the resistance and spied on the German soldiers and passed along the information to British Intelligence.

The winter of 1944-45 was a brutal one and isolated the women and soldiers even more. Survival necessitated that the women and soldiers come together in unexpected ways. ( )

Beautiful and sensitive, this was the story of a remote hamlet on the England/Wales border occupied by a German patrol in an alternate history of WWII in which D-Day failed and Germany invaded Great Britain. ( )

Resistance (Owen Sheers)is a book that with a less-capable author, could easily have lost its way. From the beginning, tension start to build in this WWII novel. I'm not a great lover of war novels, but this book has an entirely different spin. The title "Resistance" has many meanings. ( )

A stunning novel from a writer known mostly for his poetry. A simple premise: what if Germany had succeeded in invading Britain during the war? Could have been a dull rehash of countless other sci-fi books, but the stroke of genius is in telling the story almost entirely from the perspective of a handful of abandoned women in a remote Welsh farming community. It succeeds because it focuses in on these individual lives without really considering the overall picture of the war. Dramatic, riveting, morally challenging and utterly compelling, and written in a beautiful easy style. ( )

Found at She Reads and Reads - Friday Finds 2/27/09

An exquisite story about four simple farmers’ wives in a remote valley on the Welsh border and how they cope when Britain is invaded by the Germans in 1944: the women are left to manage the farms on their own when their husbands leave to join the resistance.

The arrival of six German soldiers causes great concern but Albrecht Wolfram, commander of the patrol, is tired of war: he and his men are sick of fighting and pleased to assist the women with the farms during a savage winter.

Delicately told and beautifully described, this sensitive and intimate novel is a poignant salute to an invasion that never actually happened and a marvelous tribute to glorious landscapes and the tenderness and resilience of the human spirit. ( )

Resistance by Owen Sheers is much more than first meets the eye.

The story asks what might have happened had the Second World War turned out differently and ended with the successful German invasion of the United Kingdom. Resistance can be read and enjoyed on this level, that of a speculative adventure story much in the vein of Fatherland and various other books. But Owen Sheers is up to much more than that.

Resistance takes place in an isolated valley in Wales; it's main characters are the women who live and work on valley's rugged farms. As the novel opens, the women wake to find all of their husbands have left the valley without a trace and without a note. The women react in anger, sorrow and fear but they all know that their men, husbands, fathers and brothers, have left to join the resistance against the invading German army. This is the first level of resistance in the novel.

The second level addresses how the various women cope with their husbands absence. They must take over all of the farm work, they must find a way to keep the world outside the valley from discovering their husbands have left or risk being shot as aiding the insurgency, and they must cope with the emotional aspects of their husbands' absence. They have to resist the temptation to leave the valley, to give up on the possibility of seeing their husbands again and the temptation to give in to the emotional trauma of their loss. Mr. Sheers portrays all of this with eloquence, simplicity and subtly. I found the writing in Resistance to be some of the best I've encountered in some time. He is able to make a man's fading indentation in a double bed heartbreaking without making it sentimental.

The war goes on outside the valley and eventually enters it in the form of a German patrol of six soldiers. The patrol leader who speaks fluent English has seen enough of war. He decides to lay low and stay in the valley as long as possible, hopefully avoiding the ending days of the fighting. The soldiers become a third level of resistance for the women in the valley. They are basically, ordinary men, probably would have been good men had Hitler never come to power, but they are the enemy. The longer they remain in the valley, the more comfortable the women become with them and the temptation to stop resisting and begin collaborating by becoming friends grows. Afterall, the war is far away from the valley and the women could use some help with their farms.

Mr. Sheers reminds us that there is a war on through the fourth level in Resistance. He tells the story of a young man, too young to be a soldier as the war opens, who is recruited by the British army to maintain a watch on the valley and report any and all enemy action. He is told that he will probably only have two weeks to live once the Germans arrive, but because the German patrol leader is trying to hide out the rest of the war he survives long into the occupation. Long enough to begin wondering if he should continue with the resistance. Long enough to see the townspeople eagerly accept German customers in their shops.

I can't say much more without spoiling the ending, but I will say that the book's closing events were both shocking and dramatically satisfying and that they added yet another layer of meaning to Resistance.

I'm giving Resistance by Owen Sheers five out of five stars and moving it to the top of my list of best books read in 2008 so far. I give it my highest recommendation. ( )

If Germans won war...

speculates on women in

remote Welsh valley.

I think poets make great novelists. Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, even Shel Silverstein all embrace a stunningly descriptive way of writing that makes their stories and characters just flow through your mind. Like his poetic counterparts, Owen Sheers used this lyrical style in his debut novel Resistance.

Resistance is an alternate history – what if the German army invaded England during World War II? In this book, Sarah Lewis woke one morning to find her husband missing. In fact, all of the men in her Welsh valley had disappeared with no note, explanation or forewarning. Another wife, Maggie, discovered a pamphlet in her barn that led them to a grave conclusion: their husbands and sons left to join the Resistance.

Then, things become more precarious when a German patrol arrived in their valley, led by Captain Albrecht Wolfram, an Oxford-trained medieval scholar who became an unlikely soldier when Germany went to war. Settled into an abandoned house, the German soldiers collectively decided to stay in this isolated area because they felt the end of the war was near. As a fierce winter dug its teeth into the valley, the men helped the women maintain their farms. While their assistance was accepted reluctantly at first, the soldiers and women formed bonds as they fought against the devastating winter.

Two forces, however, threatened their delicate coexistence. If the Gestapo discovered these women whose husbands were Resistance fighters, the women would be executed (and more than likely the German soldiers would be court marshaled and killed too). If the British Resistance discovered that the women were “collaborating” with the German soldiers, their countrymen would kill them all. Isolation could be maintained easily during the winter. But when spring arrived, the sheep had to be brought to market, cows needed mates and goods needed to be exchanged. Spring, a time of new beginnings, created an unavoidable compromise in the fate of these characters.

The story is loosely based on the existence of a real Resistance group that Britain formed during World War II. Sheers also researched life on Welsh farms during this time, resulting in an engaging historical novel (despite the alternate history). Admittedly, I found some issues with the advancement of the plot, but overall, Resistance was a compelling story with fully developed characters, vivid descriptions of Wales and heart-breaking accounts of the effect of war on men and women. If you like World War II fiction or alternate histories, then I highly recommend Resistance to you. ( )

I greatly enjoyed this novel, with its depiction of Britain in the aftermath of a failed D-Day. Not an action-packed war epic, but rather an intimate chronicle of the tragic effects of war on a few human lives. Beautifully written -- meditative and chilling. ( )

When I think of the word resistance, I think of people fighting at all costs to fight off an invader. I know a little bit about the civilians fighting the Nazis in Russia, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, and other places. So when I picked up Resistance by Owen Sheers, I was expecting to see some of that ferocious fighting.

Resistance is one of my favorite types of novels. It’s an alternate history. But it’s not just any alternate history, it’s a World War II alternate history. Like Len Deighton’s SS-GB, Resistance is set in a world where the Soviets lost the battle of Stalingrad, where the Nazis figured out that Britain and the United States were lying about the target of the D-Day invasion and fought off the invasion. In this world, the Nazis invaded England. Even though Sheers’ alternate history required a lot of things to go wrong for the Allies, he makes it seem terrifyingly plausible. All through the beginning of the novel, as I read along with the English characters, I felt a lot of dread as the Nazis made their way inland and started to subdue the English.

The novel follows three different characters. Sarah Lewis, the first protagonist you meet, lives on a farm in an isolated Welsh valley. One morning, she wakes to find her husband missing. Later, she discovers that all the men from the valley are gone, with no explanation. The second character we met is George, a man who was pulled into the British intelligence service in a peripheral way. He’s only supposed to be activated if the Germans invade. The third character is Albrecht Wolfram, a Wehrmacht captain who is sent to patrol Sarah’s valley. As the novel progressed, their story lines intersect.

One of the main issues that the British characters have to wrestle with is whether or not they’ll capitulate to the Nazis. It’s a hell of a lot safer to listen to the Germans’ proclamations, but they are all told over and over again by the British government-in-exile and by they British military and by their peers that they need to fight. Sheers lets you know what the penalties are for resistance though, because the Nazis learned a lot of hard lessons from the French, Russian, and other resistance groups. So, when I said in the beginning that I was expecting a lot of fighting, you can see why if you read that Wikipedia article. But this novel isn’t really about fighting, its about living in difficult times and making very hard choices.

As you read through this book, you start to feel sympathy for characters who, in the normal course of things, you wouldn’t feel any sympathy for. There were a couple of times in the book, where I thought about the Holocaust victims. When I read a book about World War II or see a movie about the war, and the victims of the Holocaust come up, I always think, “Hold on, guys! Stay alive until 1945 and you’ll live through this.” But I always get an awful feeling when I’m reading an alternate history where the Germans win.

Really good alternate history does more than simply speculate about one or two of the limitless “what if” possibilities offered by the past. In the best writing of this type those “what ifs” are just starting points for stories that go well beyond the big picture to consider what the historical changes would mean to ordinary people caught up in their wake. Resistance, Owen Sheens’ debut novel, does exactly that, and does it remarkably well.

What if the allied invasion of France had been repelled by a German army fully prepared to meet the invaders on the beaches of Normandy? What if that failed invasion resulted in such a devastating defeat for the Allies that Germany was almost immediately able to land her soldiers on England’s southern coast and begin a march to London?

The women of the isolated Olchon Valley of Wales did not even have time to wonder “what if” before they woke up one morning to find that every one of their husbands and sons had vanished, leaving behind nothing to indicate where they had gone or when they might return. But Maggie, oldest of the women, knew in her heart that the men would be gone for a long time when she saw that her husband William had left their cows un-milked, something he had never done in all their years together. She was able to convince the rest of the women that their husbands had joined the resistance, something they hardly dare speak of even among themselves, and that it is their duty to work the farms on their own while their men were away.

And that is exactly what they try to do until a small German patrol suddenly appears in the valley on a mission of its own. Despite the women’s efforts to disguise the absence of the valley’s men, Captain Albrecht Wolfram quickly reaches the correct conclusion that the women are alone and that their husbands are involved in fighting the German invasion. Albrecht knows that he should report the situation to his superiors but he realizes that, if he does so, everyone in the valley will be killed as an example of what will happen to the families of others who join the underground resistance. Albrecht has already seen the worst that war has to offer and he does not have the stomach to cause the deaths of these innocent women. He, in fact, realizes that his patrol has dropped through the cracks of the German command and decides to keep his men safely in the valley long after their initial mission has been completed.

When harsh winter weather sets in, making it impossible for the soldiers to leave the valley even if they want to, both the women and the soldiers come to realize that they must depend on each other for survival. The women grudgingly reach the conclusion that their resistance is no longer possible. Out of necessity the two groups learn to accommodate each other and over the long winter months personal relationships change to the point that both sides almost forget that they are at war with each other. What they have in common is more important than their differences.

But seasons change, and winter is always followed by spring. Warmer weather opens the valley to the outside world again and the realities of life under a ruthless occupying force. Are the women in more danger from German reprisal or from their neighbors who see them as collaborators? Should they have done more to resist the valley’s invaders? What will their husbands think of them? Those are just some of the questions that readers will ponder long after they turn the last page of Resistance.

This one is not to be missed.

Rated at: 5.0 ( )

When Sarah Lewis awakens one morning to find her husband Tom not in bed beside her, she doesn't worry. Tom sometimes rises early to start work on the farm. She does start to worry though when she notices both pairs of Toms works boots are gone.
Sarah is not the only one missing a husband. All the wives in the village awaken to find their husbands have disappeared.
As days turn into weeks the women carry on with the chores of running their farms. Each one hoping that soon the men will return.
The war that has always seemed so far away has now come to them. One day out of blue, 5 German soldiers show up at each of the farms. None of the women tell the soldiers that they have no ideal where their husbands have disappeared to, only that they will return home soon.
As the brutal winter months set in, the women are forced by circumstances to accept by the German soldiers. This is a crime punishable by death.

This book is more than a simple story of a group of women in small Welsh village or a patrol of German soldiers taking up residence in the village. To me it is more of what would you do if a foreign government took control of your country. Would you resist or would you accept that their there and just live with it?
This is an alternate history novel. The setting is during WWII. The Germans have taken over Great Britain and Russia. The Allies (U.S.A.) are forced back into their borders to protect themselves against Japan.
I don't know if I've done this novel justice with my review. I thought the author does a great job with telling story. ( )

Imagine that you go to bed one night and sleep late the next morning. Your country is embroiled in World War II and the rumors that German troops are drawing near are growing stronger every day.

Imagine that you wake up and your husband and all the other men of the village have disappeared without a word.

Imagine that Germany had successfully occupied England.

Imagine a German patrol shows up in your village and there is no one to protect you.

With World War II more than 5 decades in the past, it is hard to imagine that things could turn out any differently than they did. However, in a short section in the Afterword, author Owen Sheers tells us that for a period of time in 1940, the scenario imagined in the book Resistance was a possibility. For Sarah Lewis and her neighbors, Mary, Menna, and Maggie, it is reality.

Things do not unfold as expected though and the story is not predictable. Nazi officer Albrecht Wolfram is battle weary by the time he and his patrol reach the village in Wales. He has seen and done things that he would rather forget and he is not interested in tyrannizing the women. Instead, he is interested in peaceful coexistence. The question then becomes will outside forces allow this. We don't get neat and tidy answers and must draw our own conclusions but the story itself is the treasure.

I found this book to be a captivating story and I was constantly caught between wondering which parts were fact and which parts were imagined. Fortunately, the author took the time to let us know at the end of the book. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about WW II. (4/5) ( )

What if the D-Day landings had failed? What if London had fallen and Britain been occupied by Nazi forces? What if instead of an Allied victory, World War II had gone another way? These are the questions which writer Owen Sheers asks and answers in his debut novel Resistance. The novel unfolds in 1944 in a tiny Welsh valley when four women awake to find their husbands gone - no warning, no explanation except for a tattered manual which implies the men have left to become part of an organized underground resistance against the impending Nazi occupation. Maggie (an older woman with strength of heart and body), Mary (struggling to raise her teenage daughter after her son has been killed in the war), Menna (a young mother with two toddlers), and Sarah (with dreams of a future in the rolling Welsh hills) come together to help and support each other on their farms. Determined to survive until their men return, they are shocked to discover a Nazi patrol in the valley. When winter arrives earlier than expected, the fragile balance between these two groups is shaken and changed.

Resistance is a fully imagined, beautifully constructed novel about grief and survival during wartime. Sheers has won the Eric Gregory Award and the Vogue Young Writer's Award for his first poetry collection, and the lyrical language in Resistance reminds the reader of those literary roots. As the seasons progress, bringing with them changes between the women and the Nazi soldiers, the reader is treated to graceful descriptions of the Welsh countryside with all its colors, smells, and sights. The brutality of the environment is mixed with its beauty, creating a backdrop which is perfect for the plot. Sheers builds tension between the characters gradually, revealing their motivations with the fine touch of an artist. Albrecht Wolfram, the German Captain, defies the stereotype of the Nazi soldier. Sheers shows his humanity lost in his role as soldier, and in doing so allows for sympathy and understanding. Likewise, in revealing the women's strengths, Sheers also exposes their fears and weaknesses which creates characters of depth who are fully realized.

The story does not tie up all the ends; it is not predictable. In leaving the ending open, Sheers allows the reader to reach her own conclusions. Although some will not appreciate the subtleness of this, I found it to be the appropriate choice for the novel.

Sheers is a young writer, and he shows great promise with this debut novel. I look forward to reading more from him in the future.

Resistance is highly recommended; rated 4.5/5 ( )

Great stuff. I love reading alternative histories and this a) involves Germans (I am German) and b) plays out in the area where I spent my last holidays. It caught my eye on the foreign languages shelf in the book shop. Though I must admit --at first sight I was going "Oh no, not another WW2 novel?" But I really should trust my bookseller, they put some amazingly good stuff in that shelf.
The story is set in the Olchon valley, off the Hatterall Ridge (which I walked in its length last summer). The protagonists are a group of Welsh women, whose husbands have vanished into the woods to form a resistance group, and a detachment of German soldiers of the Occupation forces that came to the valley with a special task. The patrol subsequently falls off the radar of their superiors, and in the coldest winter people can remember, the winter of 1944, those two groups slowly get involved and change each other in ways no-one had expected. An interesting premise, a captivating story and good writing made me read through this in a week (which, at the moment, is rather quick!). Sheer put some serious "Kopf-Kino" moments on paper, there. The story is pretty much open-ended, which is not bad, since it leaves room to speculate on your own about the future --even more "Kopf-Kino". ( )

Superb novel answering the question 'What if the Germans had won?'. Sheers is going to be a great poet, and he can write great novels too. Not fair! ( )