Bloody wars with their untold victims––both the dead and those who survived––do not always end with peace agreements or simply by a laying down of weapons, as weary governments of involved countries soon find out. And occasionally, conflicts continue their deathly course on a much smaller scale, between individuals, between sworn enemies. The story I tell in The Serpent’s Motto captures the horrors and drama of World War II and the zeitgeist of the mid 1950s in postwar Europe. The latter period is not a happy one either. People go about their lives carrying their miseries, licking their wounds, and trying to forget the unforgettable. But life has to go on even if evil is still lurking, menacing the babe in arms.