Lilac Time

A novel by Phyllis Bischoff

Available as an e-book from Amazon

The Story

Lilac Time is the story of Ida, an elderly Austrian woman, who has made England her home for the past 60 years.

Following a fall, Ida is less able to look after herself and her family arrange for her to move into a care home, where suppressed memories of her life in Vienna during the war start to dominate her thoughts.

Ida's emerging story begins to impact on her three grown-up children in different ways, but it is Anna, the younger daughter and the most attentive to her mother, who encourages her to speak about her life as a young wife and mother in Austria.

As Anna begins to unravel the events of the past, she takes a trip to Vienna in an attempt to discover what happened to her mother during the darkest days of Nazi occupation.

The whole family is stunned by Ida's final revelation....

The Author

Phyllis Bischoff is a teacher of modern languages and has spent time in Germany and Austria. Her interest in the history of Nazi-dominated Germany and, particularly, the situation in Austria following the annexation by Germany in 1938, inspired her to write Lilac Time, which is her first novel. She lives in rural Kent in the UK.

Her second novel, The Blue Hour, is the story of Elizabeth who leaves her life of tranquil retirement to revisit Paris, the city where she fell in love just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Unexpected events and a chance encounter with an old friend mean that she stays longer than planned and discovers some uncomfortable truths about the dark years of the German Occupation and the fate of her fellow students.