Magda was a pretty young war widow on her lunch break. Hans was a soldier on furlough, a Bavarian farm boy Magda found wandering lost in Berlin. After two weeks together, she sent him on his way--back to the nightmare of the Eastern Front.

Nine months later, Magda is trying to survive as her city is bombed to rubble, while Hans is somewhere in the Ukraine, slogging through snow and mud to find his way back to her, struggling to maintain his humanity despite the horrors he has survived and the brutality he has witnessed--and perpetrated.

Retreat is a story of the terrible costs of war, of love amid crushing defeat, of complicity--and redemption.