Publisher: 5th August 2020 by HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Pages: 350 pages
How I Read It: ARC book
Genre: historical fiction, world war II
My Rating: 5 cups
Synopsis:
An enthralling new tale of courage, betrayal and survival in the hardest of circumstances that readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Secret Orphan and The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz will love.
Germany, 1944. A prisoner in the camps, Anke Hoff is doing what she can to keep her pregnant campmates and their newborns alive.
But when Anke’s work is noticed, she is chosen for a task more dangerous than she could ever have imagined. Eva Braun is pregnant with the Führer’s child, and Anke is assigned as her midwife.
Before long, Anke is faced with an impossible choice. Does she serve the Reich she loathes and keep the baby alive? Or does she sacrifice an innocent child for the good of a broken world?
My Thoughts
I am fast becoming a fan of Mandy Robotham. Having read her, ‘The Secret Messenger’ (HERE) and giving it five stars, I had high expectations for this read (she has another upcoming novel, ‘The Berlin Girl’ out in late October and believe me, after two five star reads for me, I will be eager to get my hands on that one as well!) This was a really good book. Really good! Quick to read as not that many pages, with short engaging chapters, writing that engages you from the start and a plausible plot line that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.
‘The house itself became more illuminated, and sounds of male laughter drifted out into the mountain air. Down there, across the world, thousands - millions - of people were sobbing, screaming and dying, and all I could hear was amusement. I went to bed and rammed the pillow against my ears, desperate to shut out all the wrong in this mad arena called life.’
Mandy places you so easily into the character of Anke that you often pause to ponder, ‘what would I have done’? A German political prisoner, she is strong and sensible, yet caught up in the madness of firstly concentration camp life and then Hitler’s mountain retreat to assist his mistress, Eva Braun. You cannot help but feel the inner turmoil for these well written characters and the daily decisions that confront them. But, how do you bring humanity into what is clearly an inhumane situation?
‘Confusion draped again like a thick fog, twisting the moral threads in my brain. I was supposed to feel dislike towards this woman, hatred even. She had danced with the devil, created, and was now nurturing, his child. And yet she appeared like any woman with a proud bump and dreams of cradling her newborn. I wished there and then I was back in the camp, with Rosa by my side, where the world was ugly but at least black and white. Where I knew who to seethe against, and who the enemy was.’
Herein lies Mandy’s magic in this book - well thought out themes with some really strong and confronting scenes. Whether it be the violence of the Nazis, the graphic details of childbirthing to the horrifying immediate loss of life and the impact this must have had on those new mothers, this is a tale not for the faint hearted. Many an ethical moment is up for consideration and what Mandy brings to each of these events is what makes this book outstanding for her readers.
‘... unfair as it seemed, this baby was more than mere flesh and blood, and I had been naive to think we could treat this as just another birth among thousands. We might need more than midwifery skills to secure everyone's future.’
With impressive research evident for pregnancy, labour and delivery (Mandy was a midwife) to the horrors of life in the woman’s concentration camp, Ravensbruck, Mandy covers these difficult topics on morality and violence with care. She highlights the medical hierarchy of the time of doctors versus midwives with a strong case for women trusting their bodies in the birthing process (not to mention the Nazi view on any type of abnormality). Mandy showcases the strength of these women in supporting one another through times of both joy and grief. There is some romance - not enough to overshadow the key themes of this tale but just enough to add to the story in my opinion.
This is clearly a clever piece of historical fiction, an excellent ‘imagine this’ scenario. It is evocative and emotional in presenting an atypical World War II narrative. Mandy is quickly becoming a ‘must buy’ author as both her content and writing style find me desperate to get to the end but fearful of what might befall. At times shocking and graphic but undeniably an incredible tale that I could not put down.
‘Charged with bringing a live Aryan specimen into the world. The Aryan. The responsibility of life had never fazed me, in all my years working with mothers and babies, but this life ... this poor, unsuspecting child might prove to be something different. No less, no more precious than any I’d seen, but with the potential to create unrelenting shock waves throughout Europe and the world. Throughout history. I almost craved to be back in the camps, among my own kind, where I could make a difference, save lives, instead of merely pandering to rich Nazi handmaidens.’
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