In this episode of History Through Fiction: The Podcast, Colin Mustful welcomes author Dietrich Kalteis to discuss Rust and Bone, a haunting novel set among German settlements in Ukraine as the Second World War collapses around them. Through family memory, deep research, and historical imagination, listeners are invited into a lesser-known story of displacement, endurance, and the fragile hope that survives in the midst of ruin.

Together, Colin and Dietrich explore the civilian side of World War II through the intertwined journeys of Jacob, a teenage boy fleeing a village destroyed by Soviet troops, and Frida, a young girl trying to survive the devastation near Berlin. Their conversation moves from the settlement history of Germans in Ukraine to the brutal realities of forced flight, bombed trains, hunger, cold, and uncert ...