Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It has been a long time since I've read a novel this moving. The story alternates between three characters. Caroline Ferriday, socialite and former actress in New York, works at the French embassy as WWII starts. The book features a romance between her and a French actor, and this story weaves in and out, not seeming to connect until at last it does. However, you don't mind your time with Caroline, although she is not the most compelling figure. By far, that would be Kasia, spunky Polish teenager, who wants to be part of fighting the Germans and is caught up in the Polish underground. Before long, her boyfriend, sister and mother are all arrested and sent to a women's concentration camp for "re-education", a place where Nazi doctors performed unsavory operations on human subjects. This story reminds us all of the horror of Nazi Germany, of the huge numbers of people they killed, of all nationalities and backgrounds, and of the madness that Hitler was able to convince so many people to believe. Kasia throughout the story is brave, tough, but not entirely unbroken. Finally, the most gut-wrenching parts of the story involve Herta, a Nazi doctor that somehow convinces herself that she is doing the right thing, the patriotic thing. It was so sickening to read that sometimes I had to put the book down and look away, as much as Kasia's sections sucked me in and kept me turning pages. She's an anti-heroine, but it's still important to understand her story, and what drove her - and she is a key part of the total story that is told. Don't worry - she doesn't get away with it and you never truly sympathise with her. The book was well-written and apparently well-researched judging by the notes. The author was a former journalist and that shows the mark of it, and yet, it reads as fiction even though many of the characters were real people of that time period.