I’m back in my WWII historical fiction genre with The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer. This is time hopping novel set in Poland that marvelously weaves a story between WWII Nazi-occupation and modern life in America. Like always in this genre, I was gripped by the heartbreak, the horror, the hardship, the will to survive and the ability to see and do good when surrounded by so much evil. In short, this one is a page turner, and one where you still think about the characters long after you turn the final page.
In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century.
Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate.
Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents’ farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief.
I just started 11/22/63 and, if you’ve seen that book, I expect to be reading it for the foreseeable future. LOL. A precious friend has been begging me to read it so we can discuss. Well, she is the persistent type so when it showed up on my door step last week I committed. One chapter in and I’m already hooked.
What’s on your bedside?
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