Book Review: Those Who Save Us

After using my dad's kindle a few weeks ago I purchased my own!! I love it! I've only read one book on it so far though as I have a ton of books on hold at the library!! That book my friends, was Jenna Blum's Those Who Save Us. I read her book The Stormchasers last year and really enjoyed it, but Those Who Save Us was phenomenal.

The book is told in two stories, jumping back and forth effortlessly. Trudy, an historian at the University of Minnesota in 1996, and that of her mother Anna in 1940s Germany during World War II. This story is unbelievable! Anna is a German Christian who secretly has a daughter with a Jewish doctor who is then taken to a concentration camp, never to be heard from again. Anna becomes the mistress to a Nazi officer to protect her daughter.In 1996 we see the difficult relationship between mother and daughter, as Trudy remember little-nothing of her time in Germany, she doesn't know who father truly is, and she vaguely remembers this officer but doesn't know any details.

I loved this book for many reasons. I have always been fascinated by the Holocaust. The tenacity and resilience of the human spirit is an amazing thing, and I think that this always shines through so brightly in tales set in this period. I was also intrigued to hear about the experience of Germans who were not Jews, but who were also devastated by the Nazi regime. It's easy to say that we would have done "the right thing" if we were in there shoes, but it's always easier said than done, isn't it?

An amazing novel of guilt, morals, curiosity, family, and forgiveness. I highly recommend it!!