My Brother's Keeper by Rod Gragg, 2016

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Thirty captivating profiles of Christians who risked everything to rescue their Jewish neighbors from Nazi terror during the Holocaust. 

MY BROTHER'S KEEPER unfolds powerful stories of Christians from across denominations who gave everything they had to save the Jewish people from the evils of the Holocaust. This unlikely group of believers, later honored by the nation of Israel as "The Righteous Among the Nations," includes ordinary teenage girls, pastors, priests, a German army officer, a former Italian fascist, an international spy, and even a princess.
In one gripping profile after another, these extraordinary historical accounts offer stories of steadfast believers who together helped thousands of Jewish individuals and families to safety. Many of these everyday heroes perished alongside the very people they were trying to protect. There is no doubt that all of their stories showcase the best of humanity--even in the face of unthinkable evil.

(352 pages)

I asked to review My Brother's Keeper because it looked like a really great compilation of nonfictional stories from WWII, but once it actually showed up on my doorstep I continually put off cracking it open because I thought it would be too depressing (and also because it looked kind of boring).

It wasn't boring, though. Come to think of it, I've never read a book about the treatment of Jews during WWII that was boring–everything was just so horrific back then that even the most snooze-inducing historian couldn't dull the horrifying tales. As for my other concern, yes, My Brother's Keeper was definitely depressing. Its description of the systematic hunting down and wiping out of an entire race is horrifyingly detailed, and primary source quotes and images are used hauntingly throughout the book. Every chapter opens with a black and white image, occasionally of the featured person/family but often of German soldiers or real children who were murdered in concentration camps. In the beginning of the chapter there's a little bit of background on the featured figures, a detailed description of the historical context and the evils that they faced (including some truly horrific descriptions of German murder techniques), and then a detailed account of how they risked their lives to help the Jews and what happened to them afterward. I'd say that most of the featured people wound up surviving the war, though a large amount of them spent at least some time in a concentration camp. In one or two instances, the heroes–and their entire families–were murdered outright for their "crimes" under German law.

Honestly, it's pretty amazing to read about the people who risked everything to help save hundreds (sometimes thousands) of Jews from the Germans. Many heroes found it incomprehensible that the Jewish children were also being targeted, so they set up elaborate systems that rescued thousands of young innocents right out from under the Germans' grasp. It's amazing. But at the same time, I can't believe the depths of inhumanity that went on during the war. It's great that there were some heroes who rescued children, sure, but it's also horrifying to learn that 1.5 million kids died during the Holocaust. That's obscene. That's . . . I can't even find words for it. Monstrous fits, but it's not even enough. The actions of the people described in the book were amazing, incredibly brave, but they didn't even begin to conquer out the terrible evil of all the people who perpetrated the murder of innocents–or all of those who sat by and watched them do it. Gragg discusses the fact that many Christians throughout Europe allowed themselves to get swept up by the Germans, swearing their loyalty to the Third Reich and turning their backs on their Jewish neighbors, but he says that all of the people in My Brother's Keeper channeled their belief in God toward a conviction that they had to help the Jews in whatever way they could. I think that's amazing, but again–I only wish that more people, Christian or atheist or whatever, had stood up to the monstrosity of the Nazis.

But then I stop and wonder what I would have done in their shoes, and I'm afraid that I would have shut up and put my head down in order to save myself. And even if I worked up the courage to sacrifice myself, it's hard to decide whether it's worth saving others at the risk of having all of my loved ones murdered. It was an impossible time, an impossible situation. The Nazis were truly monsters in every sense of the word, and the noble secret actions of these thirty heroes (and of many more, I'm sure!) are even more incredible in contrast to the inhumanity surrounding them. I weep for all those they couldn't save, but I still celebrate every life they managed to save.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Catching the Wind by Melanie Dobson, 2017

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What happened to Brigitte Berthold?

That question has haunted Daniel Knight since he was thirteen, when he and ten-year-old Brigitte escaped the Gestapo agents who arrested both their parents. They survived a harrowing journey from Germany to England, only to be separated upon their arrival. Daniel vowed to find Brigitte after the war, a promise he has fought to fulfill for more than seventy years.

Now a wealthy old man, Daniel's final hope in finding Brigitte rests with Quenby Vaughn, an American journalist working in London. He believes Quenby's tenacity to find missing people and her personal investment in a related WWII espionage story will help her succeed where previous investigators have failed. Though Quenby is wrestling her own demons--and wary at the idea of teaming up with Daniel's lawyer, Lucas Hough--the lure of Brigitte's story is too much to resist. Together, Quenby and Lucas delve deep into the past, following a trail of deception, sacrifice, and healing that could change all of their futures.

(416 pages)

Of all the many WWII books I've read over the years, I can't even think of any that split the narrative between the war-time era and modern day the way Catching the Wind does. I really love the way we discover Brigitte's story alongside Quenby, as the modern-day reporter is hired to track down leads about her aged employer's childhood best friend lost during the tumult of emigrating from Germany to England. I got just as swept up in the investigation as Quenby did, and I was impressed by the way Dobson managed to incorporate pieces of Brigitte's story into letters and the like so that Quenby could mostly stay on the same page as the reader (without the benefit of chapters dedicated to telling her tale!), and to do so in a way that didn't make things redundant.

If I'm really nitpicking this aspect of the story, though, I do have to admit that I can't really believe that none of the other searchers found the trail of clues that Quenby does. A well-trained investigator should have been able to find all the same leads, yet everyone else Daniel hired couldn't. That didn't quite add up to me, because he was supposed to have been hiring the very best people for the search. An everyday journalist does not have the experience or training to beat out a real investigator, I don't care how passionate and empathetic she may be about the case. This is no dig to Quenby, of course, because she does make some incredible discoveries–I'm just saying there must have been something wrong with Daniel's hiring process before.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this book. It's extremely dramatic–some might even say melodramatic–but in a way that still seems almost possible. Plus, the most unbelievable stuff happens during WWII, a time period known for incredible happenings, so I can mostly buy all the plot twists that happen throughout the course of the book. Except possibly the last one. I totally saw that one coming but I still think it's just too much of a coincidence.

Basically, I highly recommend Catching the Wind. It's a fast-paced and engaging read split between the challenges and deceits of WWII and a modern-day pursuit for truth (sprinkled with a just-right amount of romantic tension, to boot!). While it does skate close to becoming ridiculous a few times, Dobson keeps ahold of the story and manages to steer it safely into port. I do wish the characters had debriefed a little more, because I felt like a lot of relationship issues were brushed past a little too quickly for my liking, but I suppose that just leaves more room for the imagination. Anyway, I hope you like Catching the Wind! Have you read it? If so, let us know in the comments what you thought of it!

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

A Faraway Island by Annika Thor, 2009

Synopsis (from Amazon)

It's the summer of 1939. Two Jewish sisters from Vienna—12-year-old Stephie Steiner and seven-year-old Nellie—are sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. They expect to stay there six months, until their parents can flee to Amsterdam; then all four will go to America. But as the world war intensifies, the girls remain, each with her own host family, on a rugged island off the western coast of Sweden.
Nellie quickly settles in to her new surroundings. Not so for Stephie, who finds it hard to adapt; she feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who's as unforgiving as the island itself. It's no wonder Stephie doesn't let on that the most popular girl at school becomes her bitter enemy, or that she endures the wounding slights of certain villagers. Her main worry, though, is her parents—and whether she will ever see them again.

11/1/14
I just finished A Faraway Island, and I really liked it. It's not going on my top ten list of 
favorites, but it was really good. I've already begun the sequel, but I'll review A Faraway Island once I've finished that.

A few days later:
Okay, I have now finished the sequel (The Lily Pond) and am bemoaning the fact that the third and fourth books of the series have not been translated into English yet. You see, they were originally written in Swedish!

The book is written in third person present tense, from the point of view of the fictional twelve-year-old Stephie. Stephie and her sister Nellie are two of only five hundred Austrian children who were offered asylum by the Swedish, and I frankly hadn't known anything about the Swedish point of view of World War II. It was very interesting for me to read about the lives of the Swedish during WWII, in part because I am actually half Swedish.

The characterization in the book was good, but not to the point of drawing attention away from the story. Stephie is essentially supposed to be a stand-in for the reader - or at least, that's what she was for me. When I was reading this book I forgot that I was reading about someone else, and became Stephie. I felt perfect empathy with her, despite the fact that I've never been to Austria, World War II has been over for decades, and my real parents were literally in the same house as me for most of the duration of my reading. That didn't matter, because I was sucked in and I felt Stephie's pain. And that's why I enjoyed this book so much.

The secondary characters are still good, but not perfect. My favorite is probably Auntie Marta (with a mark over the "a"), because she's so much deeper than she seems at first (and because I have a thing for tough-love characters). Nellie was shallow and callous, and didn't care at all that she was losing her very heritage as she dropped her native German tongue for the more popular Swedish language. Then again, she was seven years old so what can you expect? She acted her age, even though I might not like it. There's some pretty interesting side threads with two of Stephie's school friends, neither of which I really loved. One of the girls she makes friends with is the illegitimate daughter of a man who died at sea before he married his fiance. She and her mother are sort of the scum of the town, but Stephie doesn't care. It's a nice story line, it just felt kind of dry and cliche.

The other friend Stephie makes at school is more on the in crowd. She's a bit of a goody-goody, and there's a scene later in the book she says that Stephie needs to do something or otherwise Jesus will be mad at her. Forget the fact that I don't agree with the Pentecostal religion that the people on the island follow (seriously, who is this girl to say whether Jesus will be mad at Stephie?!), I just think that's so obnoxious. Stephie. a Jew who was baptized before she even spoke English, gets very mad at her friend and tells her that Jesus doesn't exist. Of course she regrets that later, and I do believe that Jesus exists, but I'm still on her side in that scene.

As a whole, this is a great WWII book. You get to see a lot of the struggles that children who were separated from their families went through, and I never felt like it was fake. The sequel is also well-written, but I didn't find the subject matter as a whole (Stephie delves a bit more into the tween crush phase than I really enjoy reading about) as compelling as this book.

Are you interested in WWII books? Post your favorites in the comments, or ask for recommendations!