The Trespassers

**In Laura Z. Hobson’s debut novel, a well-to-do Austrian family, exiled in Switzerland in the early years of World War II, struggles to survive on the charity of an American socialite**

As World War II rips through Europe, the Vederles have found themselves in an impossible situation. In temporary exile in Switzerland, the Vederles are caught in a bureaucratic limbo, unable to return home and unable to move on to their dreamed-of life in America. Their sponsor in the United States, Vera Marriner, is embroiled in her own sort of conflict: an affair with Jasper Crown, a radio magnate and egotist of the highest order.

Herself the child of Russian socialists who found asylum in the United States, Laura Z. Hobson paints a stark contrast between the sheltered comfort of Vera’s life in New York and the tense, distant uncertainty of the complete strangers she hopes to rescue.