Egon

By Carey Harrison

East Germany, 1948

Egon, a boy of eight, is found living alone in the forest and is dubbed ‘wolf boy’.

He appears to be the son of Peter von Lützow-Brüel, arrested five years previously, along with his wife, in the wake of the 1944 assassination plot that narrowly failed to kill Adolf Hitler.

Rescued from the woods by Richard Thurgo, an English relative leading a shady, underworld existence in post-war Hamburg, the boy is sent to England to be brought up by Richard’s brother, Alec.

Yet the finer details of his past remain shrouded in mystery and confusion.

Is Egon really the heir to Count Peter Lützow-Brüel, or is there more to his history?

As the years pass it seems that Egon has become every bit the civilised and educated adolescent.

He is, perhaps, even a little too conscious of his cultured, aristocratic background. All trace of the feral ‘wolf boy’ seems to have vanished.

But beneath the veneer of civility, Egon remains the ‘wolf boy’. When this leads him to a new school, his life collides with that of Alec Hanbury.

The events that follow transform the lives of both man and youth, forcing Hanbury to confront his memories, values and regrets – and setting in train Egon’s ultimate re-connection with his own, complex, past.

Will the scars and nightmares from Egon’s wilderness years threaten to reclaim him?

Egon is the third book in Carey Harrison’s The Heart Beneath Quartet. It follows on from Richard’s Feet and Cley.

Carey Harrison was born in Britain and raised in the United States where he has spent the majority of his working life. He began as a stage playwright, completing 42 plays for the stage and forty plays for BBC radio. He is also an actor, teach and novelist and was described in the Dublin Evening News as ‘one of the most accomplished writers of our time’ . He lives in Woodstock, New York.