It’s 1939. Upper class Caroline,
working in New York City for her pet cause, the French Families Fund, is
scrambling for money for French orphans. In Poland, teen aged Kasia is helping
the boy she loves deliver things for the resistance, as the Germans have taken
over her town, when she, her mother, her sister, and the boy are all taken
captive by said Germans and sent to a re-education camp. German Herta, trained
as a doctor but passed over for men, is working for her despicable uncle in his
butcher shop when an opportunity arises to be one of the doctors in the
re-education camp. She jumps at the chance to get away and to practice her
profession. Through the course of WW 2, the lives of these very different women
will become linked.
The most sympathetic character is,
of course, Kasia. Her fate in Ravensbruck camp is better than many, but still
horrendous. Herta, sexually abused by her uncle, is sympathetic at first, but
as she becomes involved in the Ravensbruck experiments, even though she had
little choice, I just couldn’t care about her feelings. Caroline, while
important for the ending, seems extraneous. She’s a woman who did good things
for the camp survivors, but reading about her life actually took away from the
suspense of Herta and Kasia.
This is not an easy book to read.
The gruesome atrocities of the concentration camp are vividly described. But it’s
a compelling read; once I got past the first few chapters, I couldn’t stop
reading. The tension is nearly unbearable at times. I was surprised to find at
the end that these were real women, and the story is based on their lives.
While books like this can be painful to read, I’m so glad to see them being
published at a time when the world is in such turmoil as it is now!
The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- from Amazon, they will give me a few cents.
I received this book free from Net Galley in return for an unbiased review.
Neither of these things influenced my review.
Although it sounds interesting I think it might be too dark for me at the moment. Somehow it seems like a winter time book.
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