In 1940, Arne "Bels" Brun Lie was a young Norwegian with a passion for sailing. When Hitler invaded Norway, the sailing stopped, and Arne and his friends joined the Resistance. Still in training, he was arrested by the Gestapo, and at age 18 began a journey that wound through the horrors of three German concentration camps. His friends were executed, leaving Arne with only his dreams of the open ocean, his will, and luck to sustain him till war's end.

For more than forty years, the memory and meaning of the events of his youth were buried, living only in his nightmares. At age 65, prompted by a near fatal heart attack and his emigration to America, Arne decides to revisit the camps and then sail his beloved boat to his new home.

About Night and Fog the book, the journey.

When the Nazis controlled his native Norway, Arne Brun Lie was arrested by the Gestapo for resistance activity. He was sixteen years old. Imprisoned in a series of camps where filth, silence, and torture were ever present, he watched while his friends weakened and died at the hands of the Nazis. Arne was one of the few to survive until the British came.

For decades, that past haunted and blighted Arne’s life. Even emigration to America failed to put the horror of the war years behind him. Then, with two young friends, he set out to sail a small boat from Boston to Norway. At sea he told his companions the story of his wartime past. By the time they reached Norway, he had come to terms with his life. He would marry the American woman he loved and make peace with the past, perhaps even with the German people.

Told with a moving simplicity and clarity, and with a sanity and goodness of emotion that must have come from courage, this is an inspiring and captivating story.