The Witch of Stalingrad

As the German Blitzkrieg brings the Soviet Union to its knees in 1942, a regiment of women aviators flies out at night in flimsy aircraft without parachutes or radios to harass the Wehrmacht troops. The Germans call them "Night Witches" and the best of them is Lilya Drachenko.
From the other end of the world, photojournalist Alex Preston arrives to "get the story" for the American press and witnesses sacrifice, hardship, and desperate courage among the Soviet women that is foreign to her. So also are their politics. While the conservative journalist and the communist Lilya clash politically, Stalingrad, the most savage battle of the 20th century, brings them together, until enemy capture and the lethal Russian winter tears them apart again.

A recovered academic, Justine has eleven novels under her literary belt, all based on a solid historical footing, and all setting lesbians in the historical landscape. After dallying with Ancient Egyptian theology and the Crusades, she moved to the Renaissance with Sistine Heresy. Sarah, Son of God took us through Stonewall-rioting New York, Venice under the Inquisition, and Nero's Rome. Then came Beloved Gomorrah, an LGBT version of Sodom and Gomorrah in a underwater setting, while the next, Dian's Ghost, honors the memory of Dian Fossey and her mountain gorillas.
Saracen's most recent preoccupation has been World War II, to which she has devoted her last three thriller/romances. Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright follows the lives of four lovers during the Third Reich; Waiting for the Violins tells of missions by the French and Belgian Résistance; The Witch of Stalingrad is an homage to a real female Soviet pilot; and The Sniper's Kiss, based on actual female Soviet snipers, lets us see the war through Russian eyes. Berlin Hungers, forthcoming in Spring 2018, treats love between victor and defeated during the postwar Berlin Airlift.
An adopted European, Saracen lives in Brussels where she has become very francofied, drinking wine, eating smelly cheese on baguettes, and enjoying the benefits of socialized medicine. Occasionally she travels to exotic locations like the United States, or to Egypt to scuba dive. She can be reached via her website, www.justinesaracen.net, on FB @justine.saracen, and on Twitter @JustSaracen.