Source: Publisher
Description: 1946: Emmy Clarke is a librarian not a soldier. But that doesn’t stop the Library of Congress from sending her overseas to Germany to help the Monuments Men retrieve and catalog precious literature that was plundered by the Nazis. The Offenbach Archival Depot and its work may get less attention than returning art to its rightful owners, but for Emmy, who sees the personalized messages on the inside of the books and the notes in margins of pages, it feels just as important. On Emmy’s first day at work, she finds a poetry collection by Rainer Maria Rilke, and on the title page is a handwritten “To Annelise, my brave Edelweiss Pirate.” Emmy is instantly intrigued by the story behind the dedication and becomes determined to figure out what happened. The hunt for the rightful owner of the book leads Emmy to two sisters, a horrific betrayal, and an extraordinary protest against the Nazis that was held in Berlin at the height of the war. Nearly a decade earlier, hundreds of brave women gathered in the streets after their Jewish husbands were detained by the Gestapo. Through freezing rain and RAF bombings, the women faced down certain death and did what so few others dared to do under the Third Reich. They said no. Emmy grapples with her own ghosts as she begins to wonder if she’s just chasing two more. What she finds instead is a powerful story of love, forgiveness, and courage that brings light to even the darkest of postwar days.
Genre: Fiction - Historical
Why I Picked This Book: I can't resist World War II historical fiction and books are involved.
My Impression: I've read a lot of historical fiction set during this time period but none set in Germany pre-,during and post-war. Emmy Christina, and Annelise are all very different people with different perspectives to what is happening around them but each storyline was incredibly compelling. All three broke my heart in different ways.
For me, Annelise was the hardest to read as I knew nothing good was going to happen for the characters but I couldn't help but admire them. We meet Christina in Annelise's story and I was both looking forward to and dreading see how their storylines met. I found Emmy especially interesting. She, like many other women of the time, is a war widow and finds herself in a land she hated and getting to know the people who she had thought of as the enemy and blamed for the death of her husband. She is also a librarian and her love of books and insatiable curiosity can't be dampened. I was captivated by all three stories and learned a bit from each one.
This was a wonderful fascinating heartbreaking book that is a very different take on the usual World War II homefront historical fiction and I will be looking forward to reading more from this author.
Would I Read More of this Series/Author? Absolutely! I really enjoyed this one.
Would I Recommend this Book? Definitely! Especially if you are a fan of historical fiction.
* I received this book in exchange for an honest review. As always my opinions and impressions are completely my own. *
Would I Recommend this Book? Definitely! Especially if you are a fan of historical fiction.
* I received this book in exchange for an honest review. As always my opinions and impressions are completely my own. *
This does sound like a good one! I do like historical fiction...I just haven't been reading a lot of it lately.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds really good.
ReplyDeleteOh sounds really good, I like the idea of going to Germany in 1946 for Emmy and the no doubt sad stories she met there.
ReplyDelete