Rated 4.5 Stars
Audio Book
This is a hard book to describe. It's not a romance but the core of the book is a love story. It's about a war but it's not just a war story. It's about the 1936 Olympics but it's not all about sports. It has spies but it's not a spy story. In other words it's twisty. I loved it.
I rated it down just a little because I felt that towards the end of the story the author started to lose his grip on the plausible. There were a couple of eye rolling moments for me but by that time I was so involved with the characters and the story that I was able to pretty much suspend my disbelief. Still . . . .
Publisher's Description:
With Bliss, Remembered, the celebrated Frank Deford has produced a work of literature that ranks with the best of his many novels, including Everybody’s All American, which Sports Illustrated ranked as one of the twenty-five best sports books of all time. In Bliss, Remembered, Deford explores new territory as he tells two love stories from the perspective of a beautiful should-have-been Olympic champion named Sydney Stringfellow.
At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Sydney begins an intense love affair with a German, but the affair abruptly ends when political forces tear them apart. Back in the US, Sydney—daring, vulnerable, and memorable—is left healing her broken heart when a striking American begins to pursue her. In Deford’s tender novel, the simplicity and honesty of choices of the heart clash with a brutal time—a time when choices seemed so dire in the enveloping shadows of a changing world.
