A young woman is imprisoned in an insane asylum in the 1600s. A psychiatric medical student in Paris in the 1940s is faced with the realities of the Nazi invasion. These two unrelated characters sit at the center of Paula McLain’s latest novel, Skylark, because both are forced to venture into the darkest parts of Paris in order to find freedom. Alouette comes from a family ... Read More...
The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn
When three members of my family rave about a novel, I really don’t have much choice but to read it, which is how I found myself immersed in the early days of WWII with a young Ukrainian sniper. A female sniper fighting on the front lines in Kate Quinn’s propulsive The Diamond Eye. Lyudmila Pavlichenko is still a teen and a single mother when Hitler invades Russian ... Read More...
The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding
The euphoria felt in England at the end of World War II was slowly replaced by the realities of an eviscerated economy and the continued need for rationing. The engagement of the much-loved Princess Elizabeth to a dashing naval officer and prince was a ray of sunshine for a worn-out country. And for any woman who’s ever dreamed of a wedding what could be more ... Read More...
The Wealth of Shadows
Every time I think I’ve read about WWII from every possible perspective I’m proven wrong. This time is was due to Graham Moore’s The Wealth of Shadows, a novel of the war told solely within the realm of economics. Specifically, the reluctance to get involved on the part of numerous key political figures in the United States and how a secret offshoot of the Treasury Department ... Read More...
Mistress of the Ritz
I began this week with a novel that took place partly during World War II so will keep it clean and end that way. Except, Mistress of the Ritz takes place in the thick of it—Nazi headquarters in Paris, the Hotel Ritz. Author Melanie Benjamin is back with a historical fiction based on the life of Blanche Auzello, the wife of the Ritz’s director during the war. Blanche and ... Read More...
Annelies by David Gillham
As much as I love historical fiction, there are some people who should be left to history rather than brought back in fiction. After reading David Gillham’s Annelies I believe Anne Frank is one of these. She is too deeply imbued by her own writing, the writing she left behind to be reconsidered by another writer. Gillham uses the premise of Anne surviving Bergen-Belsen and ... Read More...
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