Poetry of Reading

A wonderful and heartbreaking historical fiction novel about WWII and the Ravensbruck camp for women. Many of the characters are real people, while others are based on real people. This is a gorgeous story of hope and perseverance. It is also a story about evil and it is painful to read at times.

The story is told by three narrators, with chapters alternating among them. It takes place between 1939 and 1959. Caroline Ferriday, a real person, is a New York socialite who once acted on the stage. She is trying to do good by working for an organization that helps French orphans. She desperately wants a family of her own. She is not very bright when it comes to love, as she has an affair with a married French actor. Dr. Herta Oberheuser lives in Germany and is a gifted surgeon. However, because she is a woman, she is relegated to a dermatology practice. Her life is pretty crappy in other ways as well. She jumps at an opportunity to work at Ravensbruck reformation camp for women. She is fully indoctrinated into Hitler's way of thinking. Kasia Kuzmerick is a Polish teen who is working for the resistance. She and her sister Zuzanna, their mother, and some close friends are captured and sent to Ravensbruck. The girls, along with 72 other Polish women, are subject to horrific medical experiments. They are nicknamed Rabbits. The story follows the trajectory of these women and the ways their lives intersect. Caroline is eventually alerted to the plight of the Rabbits and she works to raise money to have them brought to the US for medical treatment to reverse the trauma done to them. The book also includes the Nuremberg Trials and the fate of Dr. Oberheuser.

The subject is not an easy one. But the author succeeds in combining real women with composite characters in a way that has one riveted to this previously little-known part of WWII history and to find out more about the true events.