Suzanne Woods Fisher is a magazine writer, editor and novelist. She and her husband, Steve, live in the San Francisco area and have four children, two boys and two girls

Copper Star (Paperback)
by Suzanne Woods Fisher
Publisher: Vintage Romance Publishing (June 30, 2007)

Louisa Schmetterling, who is half Jewish, is smuggled out of Nazi Germany where she has been secretly working for the resistance against Hitler.  She finds herself waiting out the war in a dusty Arizona copper mining town. Her host is a church pastor, Reverend Robert Gordon, a friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was involved in plots to assassinate Hitler.  The Rev. Gordon has a little boy, William, who is thought to be retarded. William’s mother is not spoken of and her whereabouts become a mystery that Louisa is determined to uncover. In the meantime, she charms her way into the family and soon becomes an indispensable part of the household.

Louisa has seen all of her family and friends murdered, taken off to concentration camps or put in prison, and harbors a deep desire to return home to her native land someday to help rebuild a devastated, broken place. What she underestimated was how she would grow to love this family and the quirky town.

What she did not realize was how they would grow to love her. William and Louisa develop a special bond. She discovers he is not retarded but deaf.  When she learns of  a unique correspondence course to help children learn spoken language, available from a pioneering institution in California started by the wife of Spencer Tracy, Louisa creates a plan.  She sends away for the lessons and works with William every day until, little by little, the boy begins to make the connection between object and sound. He begins to lip read and talk, revealing a very intelligent mind that holds the secret to his mother’s whereabouts.  As the story builds toward a dramatic climax, Louisa must choose between her long held sense of duty to her homeland and her growing sense of belonging in her present commitment to her adopted family.  Too soon, the choice is not hers to make, as Friedrich Mueller, a prominent resident of Copper Springs and avid Nazi sympathizer, reveals Louisa's background. Soon Louisa is once again running for her life.

In the end, William, with his growing communication skills, becomes a hero, providing crucial assistance and information just in time.