How could God Himself show truth and love at the same time in a world like this? By dying.

CORRIE TEN BOOM, The Hiding Place

Have mercy on me, my God,
have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge.
I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings
until the disaster has passed.

PSALM 57:1

PROLOGUE

THE NETHERLANDS

MAY 1945

Every sound in the coal-black night seemed magnified as Lena lay awake in bed, waiting. She heard the quiet rustlings of the shadow people as they crept through the darkness downstairs in her farmhouse. The creak of the barn door and whisper of hay as they moved through her barn on this moonless night. The shadow people were also waiting. Did they hate it as much as she did?

The war had taught Lena de Vries to do many things. Hard, impossible things. She had learned to be courageous, propelled by fear and faith. She’d learned to face death, gripping the Savior’s hand. But waiting was the hardest lesson of all. Every minute seemed like an hour. Every hour stretched endlessly. The sun stood still in the sky during the day, then took its time dawning after each endless night —like this one. She would find herself hoping against all reason that her husband, Pieter, was alive and would come home and she could hold him in her arms. Or hoping that her daughter Ans and son, Wim, were still alive and would return. She knew that if one of them walked through her door, her joy would swallow up the long months of waiting. If they ever did return.

The past seven days had been the longest week in all of Lena’s forty-five years. Spring should be a time of rebirth and hope, but tonight her imagination partnered with fear, squeezing her heart dry, extinguishing hope. She released her breath with a sigh and rolled over in bed, whispering a quiet prayer for Pieter and Ans and Wim. And for all the shadow people who waited in the darkness with her.

Sleep was impossible. She hadn’t slept soundly since the Nazis invaded five years ago. She rose from her bed, careful not to awaken her daughters Maaike and Bep, asleep in the bed beside her where Pieter should be. Lena kept her girls close to her side these days. She pulled on a sweater over her nightgown and felt her way downstairs, familiar with every narrow step on the steep, angled stairs. She halted at the bottom. A shadow moved around her kitchen as if searching for something. Her heart leaped.

“Pieter?” she whispered.

The shadow turned. It was Wolf, her contact with the Dutch Resistance. She didn’t know his real name. It was safer that way. “Did I wake you?” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I was looking for a pencil. I wanted to leave you a note.”

“Do you have news of my husband?”