“Far beyond the Sunset” – by Oriza Martins

Summary of the novel “Far beyond the Sunset”

– a World War II love story

by Oriza Martin (Oriza Martins)

The story begins in a little town in France, in 1950, five years after the end of the Second World War. The former major in the German army, Erik von Lannenberg, is being tried in court for the disappearance and murder of a Brazilian woman, Renata de Alcântara Val Verde, who was a prisoner in the detachment he commanded, during the War, in the same town.

In the court of law, in order to defend himself, her recalled the facts as they happened.

During the Second World War, by the end of 1943, in a France occupied by the Nazi troops, the young Renata de Alcântara Val Verde is detained in the Village des Fleurs detachment by the local commander, Major Erik von Lannenberg, amid protests of her friends, Carmen Del Rio and Mariana Novais Ferreira.

Renata and her friends were traveling, coming from Paris along their way to Spain. In the train, after assisting an elderly man, noticeably ill, who in fact was a fugitive, Renata was detained and kept in a manor.

Along the following days, Renata avoided Major Erik, because he was a Nazi official. She fights against herself to not admit she was falling in love with him. After some quarrels between them, she gives in, since Erik reveals he is not a Nazi, nor even German. He is Austrian and works secretly as a double agent for the Allied, through the French Resistance. In the manor that serves as a detachment, he coordinates a group of allied prisoners of high rank, in order to use them as mediators between the Allied High Command and his group, led by Colonel Stauffenberg, who plans to murder Adolf Hitler and take over the German government control to negotiate peace.

Erik also reveals that his codename as a spy is The Owl and his password of contacts is the last verse of a René de Maupassant poem: Far beyond the sunset.

Destined to be transferred to Paris, where the attempt is being planned, Erik sends Renata to Provence, in the south of France. She hides herself in some friends’ house -  the Bertrand couple and Moses Nachmann, a young jew from Berlin, who was a childhood friend of Erik – with whom she engages with the Resistance.

Erik leaves the manor, where another official of his conspiring group takes place in command, and visits Renata, in the Riviera, before returning to Paris. The lovers spend enchanting moments on the white cliffs, watching the dancing and the echo of the turquoise-blue waves of the Mediterranean Sea.

The attempt on the German Führer’s life happens in the July of 1944. The Colonel Stauffenberg approaches Hitler in a meeting, carrying a bomb in a suitcase, he leaves it there and then retreats. An official deviates the suitcase away from Hitler. The bomb explodes, killing many officials, but it only injures the dictator. After the failure of the attempt, the ones involved, as well as their families, were cruelly persecuted. Since Erik had no news of his father, who was also involved in the conspiracy, he must give in and becomes clandestine, engaging with Renata and Moses in the French Resistance guerrilla.

After and audacious invasion to the solar, assisted by the French Resistance, Erik and Moses give liberty to the allied prisoners. Since they are aware that Gestapo is in chase of them, the Resistance warriors evacuate the Bertrand’s property, in the south of France. Some leave by boat to Sardinia. Michelle, a young resistant, was confounded with Renata and murdered by SS, which also ransack Bertrand’s property and destroy the house with a grenade.

Hidden in the basement, Renata, Erik and Moses escape and follow a maquis (a guerrilla warfare) of the Resistance. After the allied invasion in Provance, in a dangerous action, in the Alpine grove, they fight against the German forces. Erik and Moses are arrested as prisoners, while Renata falls in a ravine and hits her head, losing her senses. Erick, Moses and other resistants are taken to a German detachment, where they suffer threats of torture by a fanatic Nazi, and old fellow of Erik, from Berlin, the SS Hermann. After moments of great angst, cleverly, they dominate the situation, restraining the SS soldiers who were there.

The dangerous Hermann escapes and hides himself. At this moment, the local is taken by an American command, led by Colonel Galbraith, an old allied of Erik, when they were kept prisoners in the manor. When Hermann, hidden, tries to restrain Erik, Colonel Galbraith sees him, and Hermann is killed by Moses rifle.

Decided to go back to the forest where he lost Renata, Erik runs to look for her, but unsuccessfully. In angst, looks for her everywhere: in the old property, in the south of France, even in the Italian-Brazilian front, in Italy, where he manifests willing to help. In vain. No news of his loved one.

The end of the War comes closer. Erik returns to Vienna, his hometown, and sees the liberation of the Russians. The years go by, but Erik does not discover where Renata is.

In court, he finishes his reminiscences. The trial will go on the following days.

Two days latter, the news of the trial is published in a newspaper from the countryside of France. A young lady, the Baroness Von Haller, reads it and faints. Taken to a hospital, she wakes up. It is Renata, who, after having fallen from the ravine, in that fateful day, hit her head and lost her memory. She was rescued, in a chalet on the mountains, by the Swiss Baron Albert von Haller and his menials. They discovered that she was pregnant, hid her and then took her to Swiss, so the Nazi would not find her. After the born of her son, Erik, not recovering her memory, Renata, in a gesture of gratitude, married the Baron von Haller.