Catherine Hokin

Author Catherine Hokin describes The Train That Took You Away as the story of “a lost child, a hidden painting, and two women from very different worlds trying to put their broken hearts back together again.” The story opens in Berlin in 1936. Esther Spielmann, thirty-four years old, has worked hard and established her reputation as one of the city’s best gallerists, recognized as adept at finding new talent and providing collectors pieces that perfectly match their tastes. Esther’s show more family founded the Mandelbaum bank and her husband, Caspar, will one day manage it. Esther’s father, Albert, believes that Hitler simply made “empty promises” to garner votes, but it remains unclear to what extent the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 will impact the daily lives of Jewish citizens. So, as Esther is sitting with her energetic six-year-old son, Sascha, for a portrait, her offer to exhibit the work of the Jewish artist — who snaps photos of the two from which he will create the painting — at her gallery is met with consternation and skepticism. He inquires if she is concerned about the gallery’s future status, given the number of Jewish businesses that have already been shuttered, not to mention the Nazi “crackdown on modern art.” Thus far, Esther and her family have not sustained significant changes to their lifestyle since the Nazis’ rise to power, and her husband and father naively believe that, given their successful businesses and social standing, Jews in their “circle” are not under threat. They are about to discover how wrong they are.

Following an interaction with a Schutzstaffel (Hitler’s personal troops) officer at a restaurant, they are denied admission into the stadium to watch an Olympic football match. Seeing her father humiliated and her disappointed son sobbing, Esther demands to know precisely why. The officer informs her a call was received from SS headquarters instructing that they be barred from attending the event because the Fuhrer will be there and “you’re not loyal Germans fit be in his presence; you’re Jews. And they don’t want the stadium polluted.”

Amalie Eden’s parents have urged her to return to safety in London, but the headstrong twenty-six-year-old has refused. She loves her work at Berlin’s National Gallery where she is helping set up a conservation department. After completing her studies, she returned to the city in which she loved to spend summers with her maternal grandparents. A stunning new painting is being hung that depicts a group of women in a park on a sunny day. The way he has captured the light leaves Amalie “spellbound.” The artist, Laurenz Kleber, and his wife, Rebecca, are unnerved and reluctant to speak in response to Amalie’s clumsy but well-intentioned inquiry about if and how the new laws and restrictions imposed upon Jews are changing their lives. Amalie’s earnest impulsiveness continues to compel her toward danger. She dares to voice her disapproval when artwork created by Jews is removed from galleries and only Nazi-approved paintings are permitted to be displayed and becomes determined to ensure that precious works of art – including Laurenz’s beautiful painting — are not destroyed or sold by the Nazis into private collections where they will never be seen in public again. By the time she next encounters Laurenz, his studio has been raided, and he has been forbidden from painting or exhibiting his work.

Employing alternating narratives, Hokin details how the two women are impacted as Hitler’s reign of terror expands and intensifies. As Esther desperately – and futilely – tries to obtain visas so her whole family can escape, they are stripped of their businesses and most other assets. On a cold night in November 1938, Albert and Caspar go out for dinner with clients of the bank but never return home. Nazi troops destroy Jewish-owned stores and synagogues, and the raid becomes known as Kristallnacht (night of broken glass for the shards of glass left behind). Esther is later told that her father and husband died of “heart complications.” Amalie observes a synagogue burning while firefighters watch and cheer as books and prayer shawls are tossed into the flames. Her companions warn, “It’s not our place” to intervene, but Amalie’s impetuous nature and revulsion propel her to confront the soldiers. She soon finds herself in a jail cell and is deported the next day.

In December 1938, Esther makes the heart-wrenching decision to send Sascha to London to live with a family that has agreed to take in Jewish refugee children. He does not have a specific sponsor, and Esther has no idea when she will see her eight-year-old child again, but it is clear that Jews are not safe in Germany. Dispatching Sascha to England is the best way she knows to protect him.

Hokin’s tale spans the next eight years of her characters’ lives. Sascha is initially placed with a family who lost a son about his age to diphtheria and knows he is meant to serve as a replacement. His name is changed to Alex as part of his foster family’s efforts to help him become a true English boy and not miss his home or mother. But Sascha carries with him the photo that the painter snapped of him and his mother on what he now remembers as his family’s last happy day. And although it helps him remember Esther, it also causes him great pain and turmoil because, as he recalls that day, it was his behavior in the restaurant that attracted the attention of the SS officer. And thereafter, their lives began to unravel. Was he sent away as punichsment? Did his mother abandon him? He questions go unanswered.

Esther is evicted from the family home and, at first, put to work in a card factory as an illustrator. By September 1940, German bombs are bombarding London, where Amalie was lucky enough to get back her job in a research laboratory and has become an expert in art storage techniques. When she left Germany, she smuggled out key information about the Nazis’ activities pertaining to precious works of art and she is intent on eventually being part of the recovery efforts of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives team, commonly known as the Monuments Men.

Each of the narratives is an engrossing tale in its own right. For Esther, survival becomes her only goal when her circumstances grow progressively more dire as the world goes to war and the Nazis inflict her and so many others to previously unimaginable suffering. Sascha’s memories of his mother fade and the trauma of his separation from her deeply affects him as he matures, and his self-concept is transformed. More and more with the passage of time, he thinks of himself as English, not German. Amalie throws herself into her work to find peace, but her efforts put her life in jeopardy.

When the war ends, the survivors begin the herculean task of establishing new lives for themselves. Berlin is decimated, but the National Gallery still stands, and many works of art remain intact. In what is arguably the most riveting part of the book, Hokin’s characters summon their remaining strength, courage, and resolve. For Amelie that means not just the restoration of the National Gallery and its treasures, but also the pursuit of justice. For Esther, whose own gallery has been reduced to a pile of bricks, there is nothing more urgent than finding the son with whom she lost contact so long ago. Records were destroyed, communication lines obliterated, and rebuilding is a slow process. Still, Esther is undaunted, spurred on by her devotion to her only child.

But where is Alex? Did he survive the war, given that he was perhaps in London during the Blitz? Hokin’s clever plot developments are credible and her illustration of her characters’ emotional turmoil believable. Their fears are as grounded in all that they have endured as is their resilience. And Hokin does not evade depicting their complicated feelings and the psychological impact the war has had upon all of them. Rather, she relates their story in an uncompromising and highly effective manner that is both heart-breakingly authentic and resonant.

Hokin says “nothing fascinates me more than a strong female protagonist and a quest. Hopefully, those are what you will encounter when you pick up my books.” Indeed, Esther and Amelie are strong, multi-layered, and fully developed characters – as is Sascha – and The Train That Took You Away is another compassionately crafted, educational, and deeply moving work of fiction about a period in history that must never be forgotten . . . or repeated.

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In The Secret Hotel in Berlin she returns readers to the fictional Edel hotel mentioned in The German Child. Hokin notes that prior to World War II, Berlin boasted some of the grandest hotels in the world, most of which were built in the early twentieth century. She modeled the Edel after and pays homage to, among others, the Adlon, which was plagued by “scandal and intrigue, including a thwarted bomb attempt” during the society wedding of the then-Kaiser’s daughter. None of those show more hotels still exist today. But Hokin says she has always loved the grandeur of luxurious hotels “because there is nowhere like a hotel when it comes to keeping secrets. They really are places where different worlds can exist.”

Less glamorous than the real Adlon, Hokin fashions the Edel as Hitler’s favorite hotel In Berlin. There, he presides over meetings with his top leaders and closest advisers. The stages of the hotel’s existence mirror those of Berlin itself. It is depicted before and during World War II, as well as in 1990, following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Having long languished in a state of decay, the Edel is about to undergo a major renovation and reopen. According to Hokin, over the years, the Edel houses beauty, fear, darkness . . . and secrets.

At the heart of the novel is “a story which has been told so often it has become the truth and, in the telling, has ruined countless lives probably because nobody ever thought to ask who told the story in the first place or why they told it.” The “quest” for the truth compels Hokin’s fully formed and engaging characters, whose lives are transformed when long-concealed and forgotten answers are finally revealed.

The story opens in 1929. Lili Krauss arrives in Berlin from her native Leipzig. She lost both of her parents – her mother succumbed to Spanish flu in 1919 and her father, an elder at the Leipzig synagogue who endeavored to be the “very best German he could be” and raised his daughter to do the same, was tragically killed. Just eighteen years old, she is a young woman with sufficient means to purchase a flower shop and procure papers granting her a new identity and name, Lili Falck. Intent on building “a life no one can touch,” she quickly realizes how naïve she was to believe that she could escape danger.

She soon meets Marius Rodenberg who, at twenty-three years of age, already manages his family’s hotel, the storied Edel. At first, Lili’s only interest in him is strictly professional – she has a lucrative opportunity to supply flowers to the hotel and its guests. But their relationship deepens, and she cannot bring herself to tell Marius who she really is and gives him no reason to suspect that she is Jewish. They marry, have a beautiful daughter, and Lili settles into a life of comfort and safety.

But as the political climate in Germany grows increasingly treacherous, Lili lives in terror as the Edel hosts Hitler; Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief; Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goring, architects of the Holocaust; and other party leaders. Marius is a proud German intent on protecting and preserving both his family and they successful business they have created, but Lili is horrified when he salutes the officers, oblivious to the threat they pose to his wife and child, along with many of his employees. “Marius had saluted the officers back without thinking – that was the problem. His arm had shot up and her jaw had dropped. . . . The encounter had left him as untouched as it had terrified her. Because he didn’t see the threat – why would he? He’s never lived in a world where you can lose your footing overnight.” Gradually, life in Germany becomes exponentially more dire for Jews as the Nuremberg laws are enacted and complete Aryanization is mercilessly implemented.

A second narrative begins in 1990, four months after the Berlin Wall falls. Lucy has traveled to Belin for the first time, assigned by her employer to oversee restoration of the Edel hotel and bring it back to life. As she walks through the door, she feels the structure’s magic. “This place has lived through so much history, the past is soaked through its walls. There’s a story here waiting to be uncovered,” she observes. When she meets the lead architect on the project, Adam Wendl, she is surprised to learn he is the grandson of Marius Rodenberg. Adam was raised by his mother, Gabi, in East Berlin, who told him little about his family, including his grandfather who went missing in the 1943 battle for Stalingrad and has for many years been presumed dead. Lili, Adam’s grandmother, gained a reputation during World War II as not just a devoted Nazi, but a close friend of the Fuhrer and his closest advisors because of their frequent patronage of the Edel. When the war ended, she was reviled and classified as a Belastete – a person who profited from their connections to the Nazis. Adam’s relationship with Gabi is fractured for reasons that Hokin discloses as the story proceeds, and he dreads telling his mother that he is the architect in charge of revitalizing the Edel. Gabi grew up believing in the communist philosophies of the German Democratic Republic and has lived an austere life adhering to its principles. Lucy close relationship with her parents was shattered and caused them to become estranged. She is haunted by that development, as well as other circumstances that brought her heartbreak as a young woman that have thus far prevented her from entering a healthy and satisfying romantic relationship.

Alternating the two narratives, Hokin takes readers on Lili’s journey, showing the truth about it that has been lost to history. Spurred by outrage over the growing atrocities and guilt-ridden about successfully concealing her identity and living a comfortable life inside the Edel – while so many others are losing everything, including their lives – Lili becomes determined to provide share her haven, even if only for one night. Lili could “no longer live with being powerless. She could no longer pretend that the world outside the Edel couldn’t impinge on their lives as long as she kept the world inside it safe.” So she joins a secret network transporting Jews to safety. After all, what better place could there be than a than a hotel to hide someone for a night or two before they continue on their way? With Marius away, she begins journaling as a way of “unloading the secrets she can’t voice,” and communicating with the husband she misses desperately. She plans to ask him to read her diary when he returns home after the war so that he will understand why she had to act when Jews were “being erased, and the city papered over the gaps as if we were never here.” She writes that her father “would be proud of me for making this stand,” even as the Resistance demands that she engage in increasingly risky efforts.

Hokin has crafted a uniquely inventive and gripping tale. In one narrative, she reveals to readers exactly what is happening in Lili’s life. She is a sympathetic, fully developed character and Hokin compassionately illustrates how she reacts to a world gone mad. Initially fueled by a youthful desire to protect herself, time passes, and she matures, falls in love, and becomes a mother. She fully comprehends the duality of her life. She is both sheltered and fed, and in grave peril should her past and true identity become known. She loves her husband and daughter fiercely, as is loyal to and protective of the hotel’s employees. As the Nazis carry out unthinkable atrocities, Lili is repulsed by having to host the architects of those vile acts, and her revulsion, guilt about hiding in plain sight, and moral convictions compel her to join the Resistance. “I’ve been a coward, living my safe life while so many others have had that right stripped away. It’s not enough. I owe my father more than my silence,” Lili says. But Lili is not experienced in espionage. Is she courageous and convincing enough to carry out the dangerous mission into which the Resistance presses her?

Hokin’s more modern characters are equally fascinating. In 1990, as Lucy and Adam grow closer, sharing details about their respective pasts, Ludy discovers Lili’s journal among many abandoned items in the hotel basement. Lucy becomes entranced and, as she reads the entries, it becomes clear that Lili’s legacy has been misrepresented. Intent on piecing together, to the extent possible, what really happened to Lili, Adam joins her in the search for evidence. He also helps her take steps to reconcile her past, while hoping that learning more about his grandparents will facilitate healing in his relationship with Gabi. Adam and Lucy both carry guilt about choices they made as young adults have reverberated in their own and others’ lives. For Adam, his inability to accept the limitations of a life in East Berlin had far-reaching consequences not just for him, but also for Gabi, “a dowdy and functional-looking woman,” is bitter and ailing. She grew up feeling abandoned by her parents and ashamed of being the daughter of a woman condemned for aligning herself with and profiting from Nazis. “Everything Gabi’s done in her life was to redress the shame of having a Nazi for a mother,” Adam notes, even though that characterization of Lili has always been at odds with the loving mother who resides in Gabi’s early childhood memories.

The Secret Hotel in Berlin is well-researched, set against the backdrop of actual events and depicting historical figures, although, as noted, the Edel is a fictional counterpart to the real hotels of the era. Hokin’s riveting story is moving, poignant, and thought-provoking. She explores the various ways in which childhood beliefs impact decision-making and how choices fueled by self-interest have the capacity to profoundly affect those we love. She also examines how the discovery of new evidence disavowing matters previously believed to be true can be life-altering in myriad ways.

The Secret Hotel in Berlin is another beautifully constructed, richly emotional, and memorable work of historical fiction from the exceptionally talented Hokin. She again challenges readers to consider how they would react if placed in challenging circumstances such as her characters face. In the case of Marius and Lili, their contrasting responses merit consideration. And as in The German Child, Hokin invites readers to explore the extent to which one’s identity is derived from family and how much of one’s self-concept is independently formed by acquired beliefs and values. It is definitely one of the best volumes released in 2024.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. show less

Author Catherine Hokin published her first novel in 2016, and has since penned eight more, including the four-volume Hanni Winter series. The stories she tells are mostly set in Berlin, Germany, from 1933 to the fall of the Berlin Wall, “dealing with the long shadows left by war.” That time period is “endlessly fascinating” and permits her to spend time in one of her favorite cities. A self-professed “history geek,” as was her father, she holds a degree in history. Originally show more from the North of England, she resides in Glasgow, Scotland.

Hokin says The German Child is a book she has long wanted to write, The story was inspired when, while researching a prior novel, she happened upon a photograph of the Brown Sisters – Nazi child catchers. They were a group of women who were specially trained by the Third Reich and then dispatched to Poland and other parts of Europe, rounding up the children in each city or town and subjecting them to a selection process. Those who possessed the sixty-two Aryan traits specified in a physical characteristics test were forcibly removed from their families and underwent Aryanization; those who did not were either murdered or transported to camps where they were forced to perform grueling physical labor and, eventually, many also died. Some 200,000 children were kidnapped in Poland alone. Following the war, less than twenty per cent of the surviving children were reunited with their families.

The Lebensborn initiative was part of a “racially-based program of social engineering designed to redraw the face of Europe,” the architect of which was Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. It was his “personal project” and “an integral part of the Third Reich’s ‘racial purity crusade’ to rid the world of anyone who was not deemed “pure,” designed to repopulate it with “good” families. Pregnant young women, most of whom were unmarried and socially stigmatized, were recruited with promises of financial support and medical care. They resided in one of twenty-six facilities within which at least 17,000 children were born for the purpose of furthering Germany’s goal of “securing the ‘right’ genetic future for the Reich” and handed off to be raised by Germans deemed worthy.

As The German Child opens in December 1979, Evie Ritter, a seasoned thirty-five-year-old divorced attorney, has landed her dream job with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations. In operation for a mere six weeks, the OSI’s mission is investigating suspected war crimes and prosecuting the perpetrators. Her workload is already overwhelming, as the OSI is inundated with requests for assistance, including from parents whose children were lost during the war and adults who suspect that the family histories they have heard their whole lives are works of fiction. Were they really born in America? Did their parents or other relatives commit or participate in wartime atrocities? Evie calls those seeking such assistance “the lost.”

Evie quickly becomes enmeshed in the case of Sebastian Taylor, a curator for the Smithsonian, when he appears in her office and announces, “I am a Lebensborn child. . . . I was born to be a soldier for Hitler, a leader of the Reich.” Sebastian produces a silver christening cup on which his birthday is engraved, along with “Vom Patenonkel, H. Himmler,” meaning “godfather.” In other words, he is Himmler’s godson. He explains that he has always known he was born in Germany, but believed that his father, with whom he had a loving relationship, “was one of the good ones.” On the very day his died, when Sebastian was just twelve years old, he learned that the cold, unkind woman he grew up believing was his mother was actually his stepmother and “I was my father’s Lebensborn bastard.” On that day, Sebastian became lost, with no understanding of his real identity. And he wants the OSI to help him find his birth mother because the “scale of the Lebensborn program, and what it really intended, is just starting to leak out.’ So, he argues, even though his quest is a decidedly personal one, the OSI’s resources can be devoted to finding the thousands of others “whose lives have been built on a lie.” Sebastian also believes that at least one of the Nazi women involved in the program may be living and working in the United States, based on a comment his stepmother made about a women’s health clinic: “So Himmler’s little pet talked herself in here too. . . . God help any of those mothers she gets near; she won’t let the wrong ones survive.”

A separate narrative relates the story of Helene Tellman, a beautiful and powerful child catcher who, with the Brown Sisters’ assistance, has achieved great success and earned the favor of the highest leaders in the Nazi party. She is a true believer, committed to “ridding Poland of the children who are no use to the Reich in order to make space for the German babies who will require its land and resources,” and proud of her ability to “ferret out a hidden Jewish child in a heartbeat” when terrified parents attempt to conceal their children from her. Most of the children she selects ultimately pass the physical characteristics test. And for the few who don’t, there is “plenty of space in the ovens for small bodies.” In fact, Helene brings two of Himmler’s mobile gas vans with her so that the children she targets can be “dead and buried before their mothers have time to miss them.” Helene’s duties also include supervising the birth and placement of the thousands of children born in the Lebensborn facilities.

Helene is a thirty-one-year-old physician and her 1943 wedding to Ulrich Reitter, a handsome rocket scientist working on the weapon the Nazis believe will enable them to win the war, is a public spectacle held at the stately and elegant Edel Hotel. Himmler, rather than her “too ordinary” father, walks her down the aisle and the union of the “ideal couple” is an important element of a propaganda campaign intended to convince Germans that the war effort is not floundering. For Helene, her marriage accomplishes two specific goals. It pleases her boss, who has pressured her to marry, and ensures her continued work. Although she has no desire to have children, it is expected. She and Ulrich are deeply in love and committed to each other, as well as their roles in the Third Reich. He agrees that they will have one child, rather than the four Himmler expects, and then get on with their lives, with Helene resolving to “pay other people to be what I won’t be to it.” But she gives birth “to a useless girl in a world which only values men,” and feels she has failed. She planned to produce a son, “a soldier for the Fuhrer. . . . She could have loved a boy,” but has no interest in her daughter and resumes her work immediately. But there is now a bounty on her head. She is a target of the resistance that calls her “Aniol Šmierci. The Angel of Death.” Which makes it more challenging to carry out her operations.

Worse, as the war drags on, it becomes increasingly clear that Germany is nearing defeat, and Ulrich and his fellow scientists have displeased Himmler with their failure to perfect the V2 rocket that the Nazis are banking on to secure victory. Ulrich is assigned to work at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp where thousands of prisoners of war descend deep into the mines every day . . . but many of them never emerge. They are simply replaced with arriving trainloads of slaves. Inside the mountain, missiles are being constructed amid fourteen miles of tunnels. But Helene and Ulrich know that the end of the Third Reich is inevitable, and they are determined to evade prison cells or, worse, death sentences for having committed war crimes. Luckily for them, the United States is willing to offer deals to scientists with valuable knowledge and skills that will help defeat Russia in the race to space. Operation Paperclip is admitting elite rocket and atomic specialists into America, providing them new identities and jobs – and obliterating their criminal histories.

Evie, the child of Helen and Alex Ritter, the director of a women’s health clinic and a rocket scientist, grew up in a wealthy area of Birmingham, Alabama, a city known for its segregation policies. Helen is admired for her work in a clinic situated in a less affluent and diverse part of town that provides services to needy women and their children. Evie has always been led to believe that her parents “fled” Switzerland, a claim that never made sense to her because that country took no active part in the war and was spared from attacks. In their home, there are no family photographs, and Evie’s parents have consistently refused to discuss family history. Evie’s innocent inquiries exasperate her mother, who insists, “Everything’s been lost. Everyone who mattered is long gone. Can that please be an end to it?” Her whole life, her parents have been cold, detached, uninterested in her and, as a child, Evie longed to be admitted into their “two-person world” and showered with the love they displayed for each other. Instead, she was cared for by others. Her contact with her parents since leaving home seventeen years ago has been sporadic, and largely a function of duty and responsibility rather than affection.

When Evie’s boss authorizes her to pursue the search for Sebastian’s mother, she travels with him to East Berlin. It is a frightening, intimidating place and they are warned that the first official visit to the American Embassy by a representative of the OSI will be monitored carefully by the Stasi, the German Democratic Republic’s secret police who do, in fact, follow and observe them. Despite complications, the trip yields important – and shocking – evidence. Perusing documents in search of information about the Lebensborn program, Evie finds a newspaper dated February 20, 1943. A front page photograph bears the images of the top leaders of the Third Reich — Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and Güring gaze proudly at a uniformed groom and his stunning bride. Even having grown up without seeing old photographs of her parents, Evie knows she is staring at a picture not of Helene Tillman and Ulrich Reitter, as they are identified in the caption, but of Helen and Alex Ritter.

When they meet, Evie and Sebastian are immediately drawn to each other. Both wounded not just from their respective upbringings, but also their painful divorces, they are cautious and tentative with each other. Sebastian is navigating an existential crisis, searching for his birth mother, and attempting to come to terms with the truth about the circumstances surrounding his conception and birth. He is striving to reconcile his discovery of his father’s true identity and affiliation with the Nazi party with his own self-concept. Is he worthy of love? Will he be accepted when others learn he is a Lebensborn child?

Unexpectedly, Evie finds herself in a comparable situation. Evie’s sense that her parents lied to her about their identities and backgrounds is validated, but that brings no satisfaction. The photograph confirms that they had to be highly placed within the leadership of the Third Reich, raising questions about their activities during the war. Did they commit war crimes? If so, the irony is both remarkable and deeply unsettling. Their own daughter is a member of a team of government officials charged with finding and bringing war criminals to justice. Was she really born in America? If she was born in Germany, she is not a United States citizen. What will that mean for the life she has created for herself — her career and, more particularly, her position at OSI?

Evie and Sebastian’s struggles are compelling fictional representations of the real experiences of Lebensborn victims. “For too many of the thousands of children born in the homes, life has been a constant battle to find answers and overcome prejudice,” according to Hokin. “In Norway in particular, where there were ten Lebensborn homes, the ‘children of shame’ have faced a long struggle for respect and rehabilitation.” Hokin believably demonstrates that Evie’s commitment to her beliefs, ideals, and profession are as solid and unshakable – integral to her core identity — as are Helene’s. They are both indomitable women . . . but opposite sides of the same coin. One is intent on carrying out a morally abhorrent and despicable agenda, and the other is determined to stop her.

The German Child is thoroughly researched, grounded in horrifying actual events and their aftermath. Hokin’s characters are credible, fully developed and, in the case of Evie and Sebastian, appropriately sympathetic. Helene, conversely, is the repulsive embodiment of evil. Through Evie and Sebastian, Hokin examines the far-reaching “long shadows left by war” that she, like other lovers of historical fiction, finds “endlessly fascinating.” The story is fast-paced and Hokin increases the dramatic tension as Evie, undaunted by the danger in which she places herself, pursues the whole unvarnished truth and seeks justice.

The German Child is a riveting, emotional tale through which Hokin challenges readers to ponder what they would do should they suddenly discover that everything they thought they knew about their family members’ history proved to be not just false, but shrouded in appalling crimes against humanity. Like Evie and Sebastian, Hokin invites readers to explore the extent to which one’s identity is derived from family and how much of one’s self-concept is independently formed by acquired beliefs and values.

Hokin writes that the myriad ways the Third Reich’s unspeakable policies “resulted in a Europe-wide and ongoing well of suffering, continues to take my breath away.” Her compassion for the characters she creates, and dedication to evoking a strong emotional response from her readers is evident on every page and completely successful. Absorbing and memorable, The German Child is a must-read volume for fans of World War II-era historical fiction.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. show less

I dislike it when authors resort to making the husband's behavior overly brutish so that the reader doesn’t mind so much when the wife steps out or leaves the marriage. It borders on over-use in the WWII genre, in my opinion. Not that I doubt such men in the Nazi Party could be abusive, not to down play spousal abuse, just saying that it irks me when I feel the plot strings being pulled in such a manner. This story being more of the same in that way.
What I did like about this book was the show more writing. The conversations between men and women, the way the relationships were explored, was enjoyable. Felix was more interesting to me as a character than Inge.

“His mother's tale about meeting his father, trotted out at birthdays and anniversaries. “And there he was and there was I: right where I was meant to be.” The story made him blush when he was little and made him sad now, but Kerstin still smiled when she told it. “Me for him and him for me and no one else ever needed.” Which nothing changed and never could. There was beauty in its certainty. There he was and there was I. There was magic in that.” show less