Family of Spies A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor

Christine Kuehn receives a letter from a screenwriter asking about her family, World War II and Nazi spies. She is shocked and confused. When she puts the question to her father, Eberhard, then seventy, he stalls and deflects before he weeps. He has known this day would come.

The story she uncovers starts in Berlin, where the Kuehns are a prominent family hit by hard times. They welcome the rise of the Nazis as a way out. Eberhard's sister, Ruth, meets Joseph Goebbels at a party and begins an affair with him. Ruth is half Jewish, a secret Goebbels discovers.

Goebbels does not have her killed. He sends the whole family to Hawaii instead, as spies. From a home a few miles from Pearl Harbor, Ruth and her parents build a spy operation while keeping Eberhard from the truth.

Their secrets reach the Japanese and feed into the attack on Pearl Harbor. Later, Eberhard's father is arrested and tried for his part in planning it. Eberhard learns what his family did and faces a decision that will shape the family's future.

This is narrative non-fiction built on family history. The book alternates between Christine's discovery in the present and the earlier lives of the spies in Germany, Japan and Hawaii. It moves quickly, and it sets out to revise the accepted account of December 7, 1941.