Down Under The Plum Trees

"A touching story of heroism and loss, a testament to the strength of the human spirit and the power of love to transcend the most unthinkable circumstances." —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris From the internationally bestselling author of The Orphan Collector comes a haunting and lyrical tale of love and humanity in a time of unthinkable horror. The debut novel from a powerful voice in historical fiction, this resonant and courageous saga of a young German woman during World War II and the Holocaust is a must-read for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Alice Network. “Bloom where you're planted," is the advice Christine Bölz receives from her beloved Oma. But seventeen-year-old domestic Christine knows there is a whole world waiting beyond her small German village. It's a world she's begun to glimpse through music, books—and through Isaac Bauerman, the cultured son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for. Yet the future she and Isaac dream of sharing faces greater challenges than their difference in stations. In the fall of 1938, Germany is changing rapidly under Hitler's regime. Anti-Jewish posters are everywhere, dissenting talk is silenced, and a new law forbids Christine from returning to her job—and from having any relationship with Isaac. In the months and years that follow, Christine will confront the Gestapo's wrath and the horrors of Dachau, desperate to be with the man she loves, to survive—and finally, to speak out. Set against the backdrop of the German homefront, this is an unforgettable novel of courage and resolve, of the inhumanity of war, and the heartbreak and hope left in its wake. "A haunting and beautiful debut novel." —Anna Jean Mayhew, author of The Dry Grass of August "Ellen Marie Wiseman boldly explores the complexities of the Holocaust. This novel is at times painful, but it is also a satisfying love story set against the backdrop of one of the most difficult times in human history." —T. Greenwood, author of Keeping Lucy

The period from 1960 to 1986 was distinguished by the debate over decriminalization of sexual acts between males. In the 1960s homosexual men faced prison sentences if they were sexually active, and so they made themselves invisible. By 1986 they were demanding their rights and the nation's attention. This change had come after years of debate. The New Zealand Homosexual Law Reform Society and the gay liberation movement actively sought reform. Many within society actively opposed it, and the issue became a catalyst for a significant rift in the churches. Intense lobbying and vehement opposition marked the fifteen months before the Homosexual Law Reform Bill was passed in July 1986. Based on 22 interviews with important participants in the debates, as well as extensive research in archives and published material, Worlds in Collision is the first time this important story has been told. It is a major contribution not only to the international literature on the history of homosexuality but also to our understanding of New Zealand society in the later twentieth century.

Earth is a place of education on physical experience. These teachings of Chung Fu offer guidelines for finding one 's own higher self.Under the Plum Tree originated from trance teachings by a Fourth Century BPE colleague of Chuang Tze at private homes internationally between 1974-1977. The sessions described the bases for present day tao disciplines such as tai chi, feng shui and martial arts. Students at the readings tended to be spiritually evolved and were experiencing their final earthly reincarnations.The spiritual self is the strongest essence within your world. Your higher self has had experience of everything upon your plane. In one way or another each of you experienced everything that you hear, touch, taste or smell before you could become your physical body. You have been sound, you have been brass and you have been tree or cat or dog. You have been buffalo or bird. Not in the immediate past one or two lifetimes but maybe 50,000 lifetimes ago. You have, within your higher self, the electro-magnetic communicating system of all living things and all energy in your plane.When you project a visual element with your higher self, it includes empathy with the birds, with the elements, with all things, because it has been all things. This is important. You are the grass. You are the tree. You are the air, the fire, the water and the earth. You, your body, is water. It is earth, it has minerals and chemicals within it.It is air, for it cannot live without breathing. It is fire, for it is warmth and without the sun it could not live.You are all things, but in the ignorance of your subconscious mind you let the water, the air, the fire and the earth rule your life. You let every situation with people, with plant and flower, organize and project your actions. You let the automobile tell you what to do, but it is an element, mineral, metal, not your higher self.Spiritual projections are not utopian ideas. They are practical tools for individual control of your life. He who projects forward and allows the spiritual self from the higher force to go into the world daily, weekly or monthly, or even to a meeting or business situation, controls his life. Only beauty will come forward, for the subconscious does not rule when a spiritual being is projected.Ah, to smell the color, to hear the plant, to feel sound, to taste music, to see sound. Each of the senses interrelates upon a scale. The ancient masters, those whom you know as myths, Odin or Isis, Vishnu or Zeus, were great masters who taught the inner way, not the outer. Your higher self holds all your answers, can solve all your problems, and can do for you whatever you wish.

A poignant tale about one woman’s quest to recover her family’s history, and a story of loss and survival during the Holocaust. Consie is home for a funeral when she stumbles upon a family letter sent from Germany in 1945, which contains staggering news: Consie’s great-uncle Hermann, who was transported to Auschwitz with his wife and three daughters, might have escaped. This seems improbable to Consie. Did people escape from Auschwitz? Could her great-uncle have been among them? What happened to Hermann? Did anyone know? These questions are at the root of Consie’s excavation of her family’s history as she seeks, seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz, to discover what happened to Hermann. The Plum Trees follows Consie as she draws on oral testimonies, historical records, and more to construct a visceral account of the lives of Hermann, his wife, and their daughters from the happy days in prewar Czechoslovakia through their internment in Auschwitz and the end of World War II. The Plum Trees is a powerful, intimate reckoning with the past.

In a career that spanned six decades, the Dutch-Kiwi photographer Ans Westra (1936&– 2023) made it her life' s work to capture the growth of a nation through hundreds of thousands of images. Her photographic catalogue is now widely thought of as a photo album of Aotearoa New Zealand.This richly illustrated biography interrogates her remarkable — and at times controversial — practice, and a life that always put photography first.