The plot was excellent. The story line switched back and forth between Anna's life in Nazi Germany and her daughter Trudy's life, now a professor in German studies in the USA doing a documentary in which she interviewed surviving Arian women who lived through the Nazi reign. Trudy was just a toddler living with her single mother back in Nazi Germany, and she wonders why her mother refuses to talk about her experiences.
She does not know that her mother, as a young woman, tried to hide her Jewish lover at her father's house...until her father found him and turned him over to the Nazis to later die in a concentration camp. Her father threatened to turn her in as well, unless she married one of her Nazi suitors. She runs.
Her lover had been involved in the Resistance and had involved Anna as well, running messages and smuggling photos and other things out of the nearby concentration camp that showed the world what was really going on inside.
One of her lover's contacts was a woman baker. When Anna takes refuge with the baker, she becomes furthur involved with the Resistance, hiding food for starving concentration camp inmates and running messages. But, the overseer of the concentration camp spots her. And when the baker is excecuted, the overseer tracks Anna down.
In order to save her baby daughter (whose father was her Jewish lover's) and herself, she must make a horrible choice. She becomes the overseer's mistress, submitting herself to the his constant sexual and emotional abuse.
After the war, the overseer runs, leaving Anna and Trudy to starve in Germany. When a US soldier offers to marry her and take her and her daughter to America, she accepts.
But, although she wants to love this decent man, every time they make love, she cannot help the remember the overseer's abuse. And, of course, her new husband cannot understand. So, she must once again, set aside her feelings of trauma, and pretend to keep him as a husband and a father for her daughter.
The imagry was good, the theme about what a person was willing to sacrifice in order to keep loved ones safe was great, the pace was fast, the narrative held my interest throughout, the psychological drama was chilling.
But, one thing that spoiled the book for me was that the perverted sexual scenes were just far too graphic for me.
She does not know that her mother, as a young woman, tried to hide her Jewish lover at her father's house...until her father found him and turned him over to the Nazis to later die in a concentration camp. Her father threatened to turn her in as well, unless she married one of her Nazi suitors. She runs.
Her lover had been involved in the Resistance and had involved Anna as well, running messages and smuggling photos and other things out of the nearby concentration camp that showed the world what was really going on inside.
One of her lover's contacts was a woman baker. When Anna takes refuge with the baker, she becomes furthur involved with the Resistance, hiding food for starving concentration camp inmates and running messages. But, the overseer of the concentration camp spots her. And when the baker is excecuted, the overseer tracks Anna down.
In order to save her baby daughter (whose father was her Jewish lover's) and herself, she must make a horrible choice. She becomes the overseer's mistress, submitting herself to the his constant sexual and emotional abuse.
After the war, the overseer runs, leaving Anna and Trudy to starve in Germany. When a US soldier offers to marry her and take her and her daughter to America, she accepts.
But, although she wants to love this decent man, every time they make love, she cannot help the remember the overseer's abuse. And, of course, her new husband cannot understand. So, she must once again, set aside her feelings of trauma, and pretend to keep him as a husband and a father for her daughter.
The imagry was good, the theme about what a person was willing to sacrifice in order to keep loved ones safe was great, the pace was fast, the narrative held my interest throughout, the psychological drama was chilling.
But, one thing that spoiled the book for me was that the perverted sexual scenes were just far too graphic for me.
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