It began with a call from a screenwriter, asking about a story. Your family. WWII. Nazis spies. Christine Kuehn was shocked and confused. When she asked her 70-year-old father, Eberhard, what this could possibly be about, he stalled, deflected, demurred, and then he wept. He knew this day would come.
The Kuehns, a once prominent Berlin family, saw the rise of the Nazis as a way out of the hard times that had befallen them. When the daughter of the family, Eberhard's sister and Christine's Aunt Ruth, met Nazi leader Joseph Goebbells at a party, the two hit it off, and they had an affair. But Ruth had a secret - she was half jewish, and Goebbells found out. Rather than having Ruth killed, Goebbels instead sent the entire Kuehn family to Hawaii, to work as spies half a world away. There, Christine's grandparents and her Aunt Ruth established an intricate spy operation from their home, just a few miles down the road from Pearl Harbor, shielding their son Eberhard from the truth. They passed secrets to the Japanese leading to the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, and only after that did Eberhard first learn of the family's spying. After Christine's grandfather was arrested and tried for his involvement in planning the attack on Pearl Harbor, her father left. Eberhard turned his back on the entire family, joined the US Army, and fought the Japanese in Okinawa.
Jumping back and forth from Christine discovering her family's secret to the untold past of spies in Germany, Japan and Hawaii, Family of Spies is fast paced history at its finest, and will rewrite the narrative of December 7, 1941.
