World War II generals George Patton, Erwin Rommel, and Georgi Zhukov never met in life, but Minneapolis writer Jane Pejsa brings them together in an anteroom to the afterlife in her self-published novel The Final Encounter (Kenwood Publishing, 2007).
While it’s fiction, it’s a carefully researched work from Pejsa, who’s been a Minnesota Book Award finalist for her earlier biographical writing. Her study of the historical facts included interviewing Zhukov’s field interpreter and relatives of Rommel and Patton. Rommel’s family gave her access to dozens of letters that the general’s daughter received from him during the war. Pejsa was able to read them in the original German.
Now Pejsa is drawing on her close contacts with history to offer a Final Encounter tour to World War II sites in France, Luxembourg, Germany, and Russia, including a private tour of Rommel’s villa in Herringen, Germany, and a visit with his son, Manfred Rommel. There will be other private tour opportunities on the itinerary. In Russia, along with two days of seeing Moscow’s major points of interest, travelers will meet with Russian veterans of the war and with Natalia Batova, cultural attaché to the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., and daughter of WWII Red Army four-star general Pavel Batov.
The trip takes place September 2 through 11, 2008. For more information, contact Pejsa (pejsa@sprintmail.com, 612-332-5073) or the tour’s guide and travel agent, Ellis Gibson (travel.designs@sbcglobal.net, 800-331-2626).
