Welcome Readers

Ingeborg Lauterstein has known both the safety and danger she describes in her novels. From the cozy complexity of her early childhood Vienna, jokes in the wine gardens, grand family gatherings, nostalgia for the good old Kaiser days, luxuriant feasts, music and dance, to the trauma of the annexation and war. Loneliness and hiding under beds in the dark. All hell breaking lose, being stalked. Ingeborg has not lost her sense of humor. She is witty with a slight foreign accent in several languages and has the advantage of being both at home and a stranger in the New World and the Old, and of course the worlds she creates.

Another aspect of Lauterstein's achievement is the subtle way in which a very realistic cast of characters acquire symbolic weight...Edward Butcher, Newsday

The Novels

Mrs. Lauterstein's first novel “The Watercastle,” originally published by Houghton Mifflin, has been brought back into print and now Ebook form. Set in 1937 Vienna and narrated by the main character, Reyna Elizabeth Meinert, this novel captures the magic of a childhood in an elite Austrian family before the nazi takeover and the terrible consequences and intrigues that occur afterwards. Learn more about this rich tapestry of human experience on the BOOKS page. Read the complete New York Times book review by clicking here.

Her seond novel “Vienna Girl,” originally published by Norton, is the sequel to “The Watercastle.” It catches up with Reyna, who is now fifteen, in the final days of World War II and the allied occupation that follows. While many novels of this time period deal primarily with the horror of war and its aftermath. This book, like its predecessor is much more about the complexity of relationships as Reyna learns about men, love, and choices in an Austria that has been changed forever. Visit the BOOKS page for a more detailed description. Read the complete New York Times review by clicking here.

Mrs. Lauterstein's third novel is “Shoreland,” which is the fictional New England town where Liz, the main character has grown up, married and had a son. Nobody knows that she was one of the blond children stolen by nazis during the war to replenish the master race. As she writes her own story and deals with long buried memories, she must also confront the dangers her own child faces, not just from peer pressure and drugs and alcohol, but also from authority drunk on its own power. Learn more about this novel on the books page.

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