Susanne Betz

The story takes place in Werdenfelser Land. In 1886. In the same year that Ludwig II drowns in Lake Starnberg, Vroni Grasegger's husband dies. She is relieved as she is freed from his brutality. But can a young woman run a mountain farm alone? The austere life, the struggle with the forces of nature and the difficult farm work push them to their limits. But then she meets the painter Wilhelm Leibl, a major figure in the Munich scene at the time... The unusual friendship between a strong woman and a homosexual painter is the focus of this modern local novel. Susanne Betz describes an unusual story and, with great attention to historical detail, allows the atmosphere of a long-lost time to be resurrected in your mind's eye. Look forward to an equally entertaining and exciting reading.


Susanne Betz has a doctorate in history and is a trained journalist, now an editor in the politics department at Bayerischer Rundfunk. She also writes historical novels, such as those about Friederike of Prussia, the sister of Frederick the Great, and the Amish sect in Pennsylvania. She presented a story from the time of the French Revolution at the Literary Society in 2017. “Heumahd” is her fourth novel, the book was published in 2023. Susanne Betz lives in Stockdorf.


Photo: Rainer Hofmann