Winner, Sarton Women's Book Award for Historical Fiction
When the Germans invade her city, Rachel Klein is a teenager falling in love. Within a year, she's delivering illegal papers and confronting Nazi soldiers. In this “compelling and touching tale” (Laurel Corona), Rachel finds her courage and faces wrenching choices.
Follow Rachel Klein as she faces double danger as a young Jewish woman and resistance worker in the Amsterdam of Anne Frank.
On May 10, 1940, the Nazi bombers blast the night and shatter Rachel Klein's sleep—along with her life as she knew it. She's eighteen, and falling in love with a Gentile in a secret relationship. As the Nazi terror escalates, her romance deepens quickly, and so does her boyfriend's involvement with student protests. Soon, he must disappear rather than face arrest. When Rachel witnesses the first roundup of 425 Jewish men in the Jonas Daniel Meijerplein, she knows that she too must act, and joins the resistance.
Despite the ever greater danger as the Nazis tighten their grip on the city, Rachel makes daily deliveries of illegal papers to addresses all over Amsterdam. She ingeniously evades the Nazis and their Dutch collaborators for months, although she has some close calls. As the roundups intensify, Rachel agonizes about whether to go into hiding. Ultimately she persuades her parents to accompany her to a dank basement, where she gets to know herself and them in a different way, and meets a new man.
A young woman can find her courage in any situation, no matter how terrible, and love is always a possibility.
Rachel is 18 when the Nazis invade Holland. Soon after she joins the Dutch resistance by delivering letters and false documents. She tries to change her father’s mind about going into hiding but he doesn’t believe Nazi’s would actually harm people, especially German born like himself. When the war breaks out, Rachel falls in love with Michel who turns out to be a resistance member. She wants to marry him but doesn’t believe that her parents would approve her relationship with a Gentile.
I liked to see how Rachel changed from a rather naïve schoolgirl into a resistance member living a dangerous life. At the start we see the Nazis behaving quite well but the situation started to worsen suddenly. I haven’t read books where it’s been told that things were moderately ok at first. Then there was this huge change in the attitude of all people.
I didn’t get Rachel’s father who just refused to see what was going on. I mean the situation had been horrible for some time before he even started to think about going into hiding.
The first half of the book is told from Rachel’s point of view but then it changed in the second half. In there we have Rachel’s, her parents and, if I remember correctly, Rolf’s. Rolf was Michel’s friend who also worked in the resistance and came into hiding with them. I didn’t see the point of that but oh well.
I would have liked to know what happened to them. I didn’t see the point of getting invested in these people and then not to know if they made it through the war.
Overall I enjoyed the book and I liked to read about the resistance work.
