An Incidental Nazi - Paperback

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by Catherine Gillard (Author)

A choirboy, a conflicted conductor, and a mother torn between love and survival--The Incidental Nazi follows lives scattered across continents during World War II, where music offers both hope and escape. With rich emotional depth and morally complex characters, it shows how ordinary people navigate impossible choices, making it a story that resonates with readers who care about history, humanity, and the quiet power of art.

A lost boys' choir, a furious mother, and a compromised conductor--one war, three continents, and a love of music that outlasts every betrayal.

In 1938 Vienna, music is the only bright thing left. For Wolf Strauss, a foundling with a clear, soaring voice, the Vienna Mozart Boys' Choir is home, hope and escape. For Dr Georg Gruber, the brilliant choirmaster now wearing a Nazi uniform, it's the last thing worth protecting as the world tilts toward catastrophe.

Half a world away in Melbourne, sharp, stubborn Bobby Marsh is being bruised by nuns, bosses and, most of all, her glamorous, terrifying mother Henny--keeper of secrets, smoker of shisha, and the woman who chooses the choir over her own child again and again.

When the choir is shipped out--Vienna to Hamburg, New York, Hawaii, then wartime Australia--their voices fill grand halls while their lives quietly fall apart. Boys are stranded, sorted and separated. Labels like "enemy alien" and "undesirable race" land harder than any cane.

Told with the emotional bite of books like The Nightingale, The Incidental Nazi follows Bobby, Wolf and Georg across years of exile, forbidden love, and hard-won survival--held together, just barely, by the music they refuse to surrender.

Author Biography

Catherine Gillard is a fiction and screenwriter based in Fremantle, Western Australia. Her work explores the lives of complex, often older, characters navigating morally ambiguous worlds. Informed by her background in immigration, training and development, and creative writing research--as well as her experience as a recovering doom-scroller--her stories blend empathy, irony, and insight into the human condition.

She holds a PhD in Creative Writing (2023) from the University of Western Australia, where she also completed a Master and Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Creative Writing. Her short fiction has appeared in Verge and SWAMP journals, and her debut science fiction novel, ETERNAL SUNSETS, explores ageing and ageism.

Catherine's screen projects in development include the drama series Bailed Out, which has received development funding from Screenwest, and Big State, selected for Screenwest's 2025 Telenavigator initiative. She is a member of the Australian Society of Authors, the Australian Writers' Guild, and "Script Squad," a national community of screenwriters.

When she's not writing, she shares her home with a menagerie of rescue animals, who more often than not make their way into her stories.

Number of Pages: 300

Dimensions: 1 x 8.9 x 6 IN

Publication Date: October 27, 2026