Day: November 19, 2020

Oh my.

I don’t even know where to start with this one.

Read it all. Don’t skim.

Take the time to soak it in.

Have tissues.

Lots of them.

This story has everything you would expect from a novel that has “Auschwitz” in the title.

The brutality of the camps. The inhumanity of the Nazis. The horror of the sheer amount of deaths.

But there’s more.

There’s resilience. There’s cunning. There’s beauty.

And there’s hope.

Alma is an unlikely heroine. She scorns everything and rues the choices that she made that led her to be a prisoner at Auschwitz.

But when an opportunity presents itself, she grabs it and uses her musical talent to save other women by forming an orchestra.

But even as she works to survive, she still recognizes the reality of her situation.

When events at the camp take a turn, Alma remains even more determined to live life on her own terms. Even if that means not necessarily “living.”

I’m not going to say more than that about the plot itself.

The characters are vivid, the scenes are graphic (both good and bad), and it’s all memorable.

What sticks with me is the heart of people. That not everyone who is bad stays bad, and good can be found even in seemingly evil people.

How good people can do good things, but still make horrible choices that have long-term affects on others.

And truly, how music can heal and bring people together in the strangest of ways.

I recognize that this is an unusual review. But it’s an unusual book. It’s heart-wrenching, realistic, and emotional.

And it will definitely stay with me for a long time. In fact, I wish I didn’t have other tours coming up, because I really want to think about this one for a while.

Don’t miss it. Seriously. Get it now.  

Author Bio:

Ellie Midwood is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning historical fiction author. She owes her interest in the history of the Second World War to her grandfather, Junior Sergeant in the 2nd Guards Tank Army of the First Belorussian Front, who began telling her about his experiences on the frontline when she was a young girl. Growing up, her interest in history only deepened and transformed from reading about the war to writing about it. After obtaining her BA in Linguistics, Ellie decided to make writing her full-time career and began working on her first full-length historical novel, The Girl from Berlin.’ Ellie is continuously enriching her library with new research material and feeds her passion for WWII and Holocaust history by collecting rare memorabilia and documents.

In her free time, Ellie is a health-obsessed yoga enthusiast, neat freak, adventurer, Nazi Germany history expert, polyglot, philosopher, a proud Jew, and a doggie mama. Ellie lives in New York with her fiancé and their Chihuahua named Shark Bait.