Many of the books that I’ve read over the past year or so have been historical novels set in the days leading up to and during World War II. Many, like the two that I featured last month, are based on the experiences of actual people who lived through those dark days. I’ve read stories of women working behind the scenes in the French resistance and children being sent overseas to temporary homes in North America where they would be safe from the bombings in London. Others have been stories of life and death in the concentration camps. Still others have told of people who risked their lives hiding Jews from the Nazis or smuggling food and medicine into the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. My librarian friend tells me that these novels of wartime heroism are a very popular genre at the moment. I find that somewhat surprising during this time of heightened antisemitism when some might even think that the Holocaust didn’t go far enough in ridding the world of its Jewish population. But perhaps it’s also a hopeful sign. It was my librarian friend who suggested that I read this month’s selection.
The Last Train to London
Meg Waite Clayton
Geertruida (Truus) Wijsmuller, a childless member of the Dutch resistance, risks her life smuggling Jewish children out of Nazi Germany to the nations that will take them. It is a mission that becomes even more dangerous after Hitler’s annexation of Austria when, across Europe, countries begin to close their borders to the growing number of refugees desperate to escape. After Britain passes a measure to take in at-risk child refugees from the German Reich, Tante Truus, as she is known by the children, dares to approach Adolf Eichmann, the man who would later help devise the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” and is granted permission to escort a trainload of 600 children (not 599 or 601, but exactly 600) out of the country. In a race against time, 600 children between the ages of 4 and 17 are registered, photographed, checked by medical doctors and put on board the train to begin a perilous journey to an uncertain future abroad. Thus begins the famous Kindertransport system that went on to transport thousands of children out of various parts of Europe during the Nazi occupation of the region in the late 1930s, immediately prior to the official start of World War II.
The Last Train to London is also the story of three fictional children, Stephan Neuman, the teenage son of a wealthy and influential Jewish family who are stripped of everything when the Germans invade Austria, his younger brother, Walter, and Stephan’s best friend, Žofie-Helene, a brilliant Christian girl whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper.
Although this book really came together at the end and was well worth reading, I do admit to finding it somewhat difficult to follow, especially in the first half, because of the short, choppy chapters that bounce from one character to another.
Geertruida Wijsmuller in 1965
In 2003, Morris, was introduced to Lale Sokolov, an elderly gentleman who “might just have a story worth telling”. As their friendship grew, Lale entrusted her with the innermost details of his life during the Holocaust. She originally wrote his story as a screenplay before reshaping it into her debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
In The Tattooist of Auschwitz, we are introduced to Cilka, a beautiful young prisoner who is forcibly separated from the other women by Johann Schwarzhuber, camp commandant, for his exclusive use. Quickly learning that her survival depends on it, she does what she has to do to stay alive. Although both books are historical novels, Cilka, like Lale, was a real person and at one point, he credits her with saving his life.
I first discovered Australian novelist, Kate Morton, when I found her first three novels in a garage sale several years ago. Since then, I’ve read every book she’s written. When I learned that she’d published a new novel in April of 2023, I immediately put my name on a waiting list with our regional library system. Obviously, Morton’s books are popular because the list was already long and I had to wait many months before Homecoming finally arrived.
I read mostly for enjoyment, but I love a book that transports me to another place or perhaps another time and a book that teaches me something. The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane was such a book. Before reading it, I knew absolutely nothing about the Akha people, a minority hill tribe who live in small villages in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Yunnan province in China.
19-year-old, Ruby, driven by her difficult relationship with her mother, runs away from her home in England and seeks refuge with the grandmother she hasn’t seen for many years. Her unexpected arrival on Dr. Iris Black’s doorstep in Cairo brings life and disorder into the elderly woman’s house.
The subtitle of this short, but intriguing memoir, My Life as a Woman Living as a Man in Afghanistan, tells much about the content of the book, but it could also be misleading to those of us living in western cultures. This is not a book about living a trans experience.
I was absolutely captivated by this story! I could hardly put it down and when I had no choice, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I didn’t want it to end and yet I had to keep reading to find out what happened. Clearly, nothing was going to get done around here until I finished it! 
How would you like to extend your life by 7.5 years? According to Dr. Becca Levy, Yale professor and leading expert on the psychology of successful aging, you might be able to do just that!
After reading Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, a 713 page novel about life in India in the 1970s and 80s, and then Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, I was looking for something light to read! Something frivolous and entertaining.
Rachael English is a novelist and a presenter on Ireland’s most popular radio programme, Morning Ireland. In her most recent novel, inspired by true events, the lives of three remarkable women are interwoven across time.
Following Augustine 