BETWEEN 1933 and 1939, German Jews watched in horror as the
country in which they had found peace, prosperity and protection fell into the
hands of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, one of the most brutal
regimes the world had ever seen. For many Jews, the chance of escaping Germany was foiled by
lack of funds, logistics, or family constraints, and even those who did flee
Adolf Hitler and his henchmen, found the journey to freedom was fraught with
dangers.
For the rest, remaining in Nazi Germany was virtually a
death sentence… and for some parents, it would test just how far they were
prepared to go to save their children.
Armando Lucas Correa, a Cuban writer, journalist and editor
who lives in New York, made waves with his debut novel, The German Girl, an
international bestseller based on a true wartime story, which was written in
Spanish and has been translated into fourteen languages and published in more
than twenty countries. And now he returns to the Second World War for another haunting
and heartbreaking story which is again inspired by real events, including the ill-fated
voyage of a German liner carrying Jewish refugees from Hamburg to Cuba in 1939,
and the barbaric massacre by the Nazis of all the inhabitants of a small French
village in 1944.
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| MULTI-LAYERED NOVEL: Armando Lucas Correa |
In New York in 2015, elderly widow Elise Duval is a French
Catholic who arrived in the city after the Second World War and was adopted by
an uncle. When a woman and her daughter from Cuba visit unexpectedly with a box
of letters, written in German to Elise by her mother during the war, her world
is forever changed.
Her mother’s words unlock a floodgate of memories, a
lifetime of loss that she has never truly had time to mourn. Disturbing events
in Elise’s past had been locked away ‘for the sake of her survival’ but this
could be her last chance for closure as she remembers a time and country she
had long since forgotten.
In Charlottenburg in 1939, the dreams that bookshop owner Amanda
Sternberg and her heart specialist husband, Julius, had for their young daughters,
Viera and Lina, are shattered when the Nazis descend on Berlin, burning the
contents of their beloved family shop and sending Julius to a concentration
camp. Quoting 19th century German writer and poet Heinrich
Heine, Amanda’s good friend, Hilde, warns ‘When they burn books, they will also
end up burning people,’ and desperate to save her children, Amanda is offered
the chance to put the two girls on the liner St Louis which is taking refugees
to Cuba.
But at the dock in Hamburg, Amanda is forced to make an
impossible choice that will haunt her for the rest of her life. She flees
toward the south of France but in her hiding place with a family in Haute-Vienne,
Amanda’s brief respite is destroyed by the arrival of Nazi troops, and once
again she finds herself forced to make a heroic sacrifice…
Click HERE for Lancashire Post review
Click HERE for Lancashire Post review
Correa’s beautifully woven and multi-layered novel stitches
together the past and the present with some exquisite and moving storytelling
as Elise is forced to come to terms with shocking events which she had
deliberately banished from her memory in an act of self-survival.
As Elise’s heart-rending wartime story – and seven decades
of secrets – begins to unravel, we step back in time to meet the other members
of her once warm and loving family, and learn about the terrible suffering, the
remarkable bravery, and the unthinkable decisions and sacrifices that a mother
had to make for her children.
With prose that soars, real history that makes us weep, and its
stark, unflinching portrayal of breathtaking horrors, The Daughter’s Tale is a
compelling reminder of the very worst of human behaviour, but also a tribute to
the indomitable strength of the human spirit, and its power to both heal and
redeem.
(Simon & Schuster, paperback, £8.99)
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