I’m delighted today to be joining Bookouture‘s Books-on-tour and sharing my review of The War Orphan by Anna Stuart: published on 7th March, the third in her Women of War series, it’s now available as an e-book, in paperback, and as an audiobook. My thanks to Sarah Hardy and Bookouture for the invitation and support, and for my advance reading e-copy (provided via netgalley).
Beginning with The Midwife of Auschwitz, this series has become a real personal favourite. While I’ve sometimes tended to veer away from reading fiction dealing with the holocaust, Nazi atrocities and their aftermath, I’ve been incredibly impressed by Anna’s depth of research and the quality of her writing. That first book was inspired by the real-life experience of a Polish midwife who delivered over 3000 children while incarcerated at Auschwitz, and really was an exceptional read, the horrors handled with particular sensitivity (you’ll find my full review here). The second, The Midwife of Berlin, had an unexpected post war setting, following midwife Esther into her life in divided Berlin during the Cold War and in the shadow of the Berlin Wall – a vivid recreation of a difficult period in recent history, a powerful story wonderfully told, emotional and entirely compelling (you’ll find my review of that one here). And this third book in the series? Again, life after the gates of Auschwitz were opened, following the story of another individual introduced in that first book, and another slice of recent history I knew little about…
1945, Auschwitz: I stumble out of the gates, tightly grasping the hands of two smaller children. Hunger swirls in my stomach and the barren landscape swims before my eyes. I can barely believe it. We’re free. We survived. But what happens now…
Sixteen-year-old Tasha Ancel turns to take one last look at the imposing place that stole her freedom and her childhood. She has no idea how she continued to live when so many others did not. For the first time in months, her heart beats with hope for her future and that of the smaller children who cling to her now.
Tasha was torn from her mother’s arms by an SS guard days before the gates of Auschwitz opened. Now she only has a lock of her mother’s fiery hair. Desperate to be reunited, Tasha asks everyone she meets if they’ve seen a woman with flame-red hair. But with so many people trying to locate their loved ones in the chaotic aftermath of war finding her feels like an impossible task.
Officially an orphan, Tasha is given the chance to start a new life in the Lake District in England. She knows her mother would want her to take the opportunity but she can’t bear the thought of leaving Poland without her.
Tasha must make a heartbreaking decision: will she stay in war-ravaged Europe and cling on to the hope that the person she loves most in the world is alive, or take a long journey across the sea towards an uncertain future?
An absolutely unputdownable and heart-wrenching WW2 story of survival against all odds and learning to live and love again. Fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Orphan Train and The Nightingale will be gripped.
Having survived the horrors of Auschwitz, then living in limbo at Thereseienstadt, a number of Jewish children of all ages are offered a temporary home at Windermere in the Lake District – a real, and well-documented project – while efforts continue to trace their surviving families.
This book focuses on the fictional but very real story of sixteen-year-old Tasha – having been separated from her mother Lydia who was forced to join the death march, only days before the camp was liberated and the remaining children were released, she remains convinced that they will be reunited. Encouraged and supported by friend Georg, a fellow survivor, who has less belief in the possibility that her mother will have made it through, the decision to leave for the Lakes is a difficult one – she carries a lock of her mother’s shorn red hair in a handbag she refuses to be separated from, and worries that travelling to England will make it even more difficult for them to find each other.
Windermere’s mother figure is Alice – also a Jewish refugee, having left her family behind to an uncertain fate when she fled Germany before the atrocities began. She gives an extraordinary level of love and commitment to the damaged children in her care, as well as providing them with an education to help them find their way to a more settled future, while many of them continue to relive the horrors that they have seen and experienced. And she forges a particular bond with Tasha, sometimes awkward and difficult to handle, as she slowly begins to accept that her mother might be gone and that she needs to think about a rather different future.
I won’t tell their stories in any more detail, but they are intense and heartbreaking at times – and are told, particularly compellingly, from their own perspectives, with real insight into their emotional journeys. And there were so many moments throughout the book that moved me to tears, beautifully captured – the children terrified of taking showers on arrival because of their memories of the death of their families, their stealing food from the table because of their experience of starvation, their fears that the Nazis had come to find them when they saw German POWs working in the fields.
The author (rather bravely) makes Tasha difficult to like at times, with her flashes of anger and repeated rejection of the care and love so selflessly offered – but it’s important to remember the severe trauma she’s experienced. And every individual in this book is equally complex, and perfectly drawn – with Alice gaining a particular place in my heart by doing her utmost to take on the role of creating a family for the children who were mourning their own. There’s a particular focus on home, and the feelings and attachments that make it so – and a very special moment when the children use the word to describe Weir Courtney, the stately home they move to after Windermere, a real testament to those who sought to make them feel they belonged while providing them with hope for a better future.
The storytelling is quite wonderful, but supported by the author’s meticulous research (as always) – the historical notes that end the book are a fascinating postscript about the real people who were involved in the project, including Alice herself, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham and Oskar Friedmann. Once again, the author has woven fact and compelling fiction, with particular power and emotional authenticity, creating a story that was perfectly paced, ultimately so uplifting, moved me deeply, and that I’ll find impossible to forget. The resilience of the damaged children, the hope that was never extinguished, and the compassion of those who cared for them – my goodness, it was just wonderful, one of those books that you experience rather than merely read, and I couldn’t recommend it more highly.
If you’d like to find out more about the project, I’m glad I took the time to watch the short film The Windermere Children, although (as Anna says) some of the facts are distorted a little – I sadly couldn’t find the accompanying BBC documentary that she recommended, In Their Own Words, but there’s an excellent transcript here.
About the author
Anna Stuart lives in Derbyshire with her campervan-mad husband, two hungry teenagers and a slightly loopy dog. She was hooked on books from the moment she first opened one in her cot, so is thrilled to now have several of her own to her name. Having studied English literature at Cambridge University, she took an enjoyable temporary trip into the ‘real world’ as a factory planner, before returning to her first love and becoming an author. History has also always fascinated her. Living in an old house with a stone fireplace, she often wonders who sat around it before her and is intrigued by how actively the past is woven into the present, something she likes to explore in her novels.
Anna loves the way that writing lets her ‘try on’ so many different lives, but her favourite part of the job is undoubtedly hearing from readers. You can reach her on Facebook or Twitter, and sign up to be the first to hear about her new releases here.
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I haven’t read any of these but I dread to think how many series I haven’t kept up with…