The Prisoner's Wife by Maggie Brookes

In The Prisoner's Wife, Izabela is a Czechoslovakian farm girl and Bill is a British prisoner of war. It's 1944 as the story opens. Bill is one of a half dozen prisoners brought to help with work on the farm where Izzy lives and works with her mother and younger brother and it's love at first sight when Bill and Izabela's eyes meet. Izzy finds ways to get closer to Bill and starts learning English so she can communicate with him better. And, then they secretly marry, deciding to run away with the hope that they can meet up with the partisans and join the resistance against the Nazis.

Thinking the Russians are coming soon and Izzy will be safer dressed as a boy, Bill cuts her hair and she dresses in her older brother's clothing. But, when they're caught and sent to a prison camp for soldiers, every moment is fraught with danger. How will Izzy keep her secret from the Nazis? If she's caught, she will undoubtedly be thought a spy and shot.

Based loosely on a true story, in The Prisoner's Wife, Maggie Brookes has created a harrowing tale of love, danger, and the horrors of war, a story in which a woman's identity is kept secret with the help of courageous men willing to risk their own lives to keep her alive.

Highly recommended - I don't use the word "harrowing" lightly. I found The Prisoner's Wife a difficult and exhausting read because the vast majority of it is about the couple's time in a prison camp, a work camp, and then taking a "long walk" to keep the prisoners from joining up with the Russians when they close in on the prison camp. It was gripping but nerve-wracking enough that I had to occasionally take breaks, walk away and do something like step outside to feel the breeze or paint or just goof online, and then I'd return to the book. I don't know why I found this particular story so much harder to read than other WWII stories. I've been reading them all my life, after all. Maybe it was because I cared about the couple and so desperately wanted them to survive. At any rate, after the long march I felt frostbitten and hungry and sad for the lives lost, in awe of the danger people are willing to face to help each other and a little sad at the interplay of good and evil, a thing that never changes. A moving tale that I'll be thinking about for a long time.

One side note: The story is told using alternating viewpoints. One chapter will be told in 3rd person (Bill's viewpoint but not his voice) and the next in 1st (from Izzy's viewpoint). I did find that a little bit jarring but it was never what I would call problematic. The shifts just interrupted the flow a bit. I presume the purpose was to tell both sides of the love story, male and female, and in that way I do believe it was effective.

My thanks to Berkley Books for the review copy!


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The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris and F2F Report

I knew I would read The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris eventually, since it's a WWII novel. But, it was my F2F group's selection of the book that prompted me to buy a copy and then read it for discussion. As it turned out, I was totally not in the right mood to read about the Holocaust. But, it didn't matter. Once it came up to the top of the stack and it was time to read the book, I made myself open it and found that it's an engrossing story. No worries about not being in the right mood. It probably helped that I've missed out on F2F meetings for several months and was determined to show up.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is the novelization of a true story about a young man who was sent to Auschwitz in 1942. A Jew, his family was told that they must pick one person to work for the Nazis and Lale volunteered to be the one, since his brother was married and had children. Packed into the cattle cars of a train, Lale spent days on the ride from his home to what turned out to be not a workplace but a concentration camp. There, he was told to turn over his possessions, his hair was shaved off, and he was given the clothing of a Russian soldier. On the first night, he was headed to the trench where people relieved themselves when he saw a Nazi open fire on the men who were there, a horrifying way to begin his imprisonment but one that made him vow he would survive till the end of the war.

I can't recall exactly how he became the tattooist and that doesn't matter. The job that Lale was given protected him from trigger-happy guards; and, his determination to behave in a way that would keep him from getting any attention also helped. But while Lale was given extra rations and a safer place to sleep, people were starving around him and he felt obligated to find a way to help them. The Tattooist of Auschwitz describes how one prisoner in a death camp survived, found a way to acquire extra food and medicine to share, met a beautiful prisoner and fell in love, and helped as many as he could to survive.

Recommended but what a gut-wrenching read - It's always difficult reading about life in the concentration camps of WWII but doubly hard when it's nonfiction or based on a true story, as The Tattooist of Auschwitz is. The one thing that really kept me going during a time when I was not in the mood to read about this dark chapter of history was the fact that I knew the author had interviewed Lale. Although he was safer than others, he wasn't completely safe from the possibility of brutality or death. At any moment, Lale could have been taken for torture by Dr. Mengele, whom he frequently encountered, or shot and replaced. But, if the author was able to interview him, clearly he survived.

F2F Report:

We discussed The Tattooist of Auschwitz in my book group, this week, but it was not the best discussion and I found some of the tangents immensely frustrating. It's only natural that the idea of concentration camps would bring up the current situation on our Southern Border. Unfortunately, that meant exposing some of our group's prejudices. I tried to bring up the fact that the path to citizenship is almost impossible for those who enter the country undocumented. "You mean the illegals," one of our members said. Yes, those who enter illegally but then become productive members of society can be here for 25 years, own several businesses, employ dozens of Americans, and still get deported because they don't have the option to become citizens, I thought. But, I didn't say that aloud because I was already feeling outnumbered, by that point. Immigration sadly is a complicated subject that people are determined to simplify. And, as one of our members mentioned, the news skims the surface and doesn't go in depth, complicating our lack of understanding by misleading viewers.

At any rate, we talked about the fact that The Tattooist of Auschwitz was unusual for a Holocaust book because there was a romance and therefore a happy ending, how some parts of the book felt a little exaggerated or questionable to some members, and whether or not Cilka was truly a collaborator or was she a victim of the Nazi who forced her to submit to him. I thought she was a rape victim; someone else called her a prostitute. I don't recall her getting anything in return but the chance to live, but it almost seemed like we read 4 different books. Not the best discussion we've ever had but I'm glad I read the book and I'm always glad I went to my F2F discussions because it's nice to hang out with other book lovers.


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Carrying Albert Home by Homer Hickam

Carrying Albert Home by Homer Hickam is a tale that's based on a family legend, the story of a road trip once taken by Hickam's parents, who drove to Florida from their home in coal country to return their pet alligator to the swampy land he came from. Hickam confesses he doesn't know what's true and what's not, so he clearly just ran with the story and had a good time.

The book reads like a string of tall tales that are interwoven. Elsie is unhappy as the wife of a coal miner and spends a good bit of her time daydreaming about the romance that never was, with actor Buddy Ebsen. Buddy sent the couple a young alligator as a wedding gift and the alligator, Albert, has grown to four feet. He likes to have his belly rubbed and he has his own little pond but Homer (the elder Homer, father of the author) has had enough of Albert and gives Elsie an ultimatum: give up the alligator or lose me. This prompts the road trip to Florida after Elsie decides that her choice is Homer, not the alligator, but only if Albert is returned to Florida. Somehow, a chicken ends up traveling along with them.

I enjoyed Carrying Albert Home but I had several problems with the book. The first problem was the flatness of dialogue. Everyone -- and I do mean everyone -- sounded exactly the same to me. There was no variety from one character to another. The second problem was the book's length: I thought Carrying Albert Home dragged on far too long. Around page 300 of the 400-page book, I started to get sick of the story and just wanted to get the reading over with. Third, both John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway make appearances in the book. As if.

Recommended but not a favorite - I'm glad I stuck it out till the end but Carrying Albert Home was just a bit too fanciful for me. I had trouble suspending disbelief and I didn't fall in love with the characters. In the end, I felt like I had to fight my way through the final hundred pages. Having said that, I think if you like a wildly tall tale in which a young couple goes from one adventure to another, you might enjoy Carrying Albert Home. I found it an average read and can't recommend it enthusiastically, but it's worth mentioning that stuff happens. There's plenty of action, in other words, if the dialogue and characters don't get in your way.

©2016 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.