Searching for my Daughter by Liz Trenow
Genre: Historical fiction, Wartime fiction, Post-WW2
Read: 2nd May 2022
Published: 5th May 2022
★★★★★ 5 stars
DESCRIPTION:
Searching for My Daughter: Absolutely heartbreaking and totally unputdownable WW2 historical fiction
The queue is long, but that barely matters. She is used to waiting. For the midnight knock at the door, for her number to be called, for the next meal of watery soup, the sound of a gunshot... Sustaining her through every moment of waiting, there has remained the tiniest flicker of hope: her daughter Rosa’s face, eyes bright and expectant, arms outstretched.
Germany 1945: Miriam has travelled for over two weeks to reach safety. Exhausted and hungry, she knows she is still one of the fortunate ones. One of the few to survive the camps. Having lost her darling husband and son, the only thing that has kept her walking is the hope of finding her daughter, Rosa.
As she arrives at the checkpoint, she is told it is closed for the day. But in her mind Miriam can hear her daughter’s voice: Be strong, stand up to them. Don’t let anyone bully you, Mum. Standing tall, she comes face to face with the guard and refuses to leave until they help her.
When Miriam is introduced to an English officer named Jack, she describes how, fearing the Nazis, she and her husband sent Rosa to England to marry. It was not a marriage of love but of survival. Now, Miriam needs the officer’s help: if she is to be reunited with her beloved daughter, he will need to help her travel to England.
But as Miriam begins to describe Rosa, there is a look of recognition in Jack’s eyes. As he listens to her story, he is transported back to an unforgettable English summer, to secret picnics in the long grass, and to a love that shaped the man he became. Will Jack now risk everything to help Miriam make the biggest journey of all, back to her daughter and her freedom?
An utterly gripping and emotional novel about bravery, enduring love and keeping hope alive in the darkest of times. Perfect for fans of The Nightingale, Beneath a Scarlet Sky and The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
MY THOUGHTS:
I am excited to be taking part in the #BooksOnTour #BlogTour for Liz Trenow's heartbreaking tale SEARCHING FOR MY DAUGHTER.
What a beautiful an compelling story. So rare are there historical fiction stories in the immediate aftermath of concentration camp liberation and survivors making their way into an unfamiliar world they had been torn from nearly a decade before. So many tales of wartime fiction recount similar stories of the death camps and Jews being rounded up tortured under the Nazi regime that they tend to all blend together after a while. But SEARCHING FOR MY DAUGHTER offers something completely different.
July 1945: Beginning in the months after the liberation of the camps, a lone woman old before her time joins the long queue outside the British border station, just beyond Russian territory. Miriam Kauffman has trekked for hundreds of miles for two weeks with little food and water in the hope that she may be granted a visa to travel to England so she can begin her search for her daughter Rosa. Just as all hope appears to be lost, she meets Captain Jack Preston who upon taking her details recognises her daughter's name. Can Jack help her get to England? And will she be finally reunited with Rosa after seven years?
Miriam has not seen her daughter since 1938 when she married Daniel Levy and gaining refuge in England prior to the war just as life for Jewish people was becoming more difficult under Hilter's new Nazi regime. It seemed to be the safest option for Rosa when Daniel proposed and whisked her away under the sponsorship of a family who will house them and employ Daniel in the Preston factory manufacturing fans for aircraft. But life in England, although it holds the promise of a fresh start, does not go too smoothly for the couple and before long are left to fend for themselves. However, being German in Britain at a time when the country is at war with theirs is not a friendly place to be. Apart from the fact that they are Jews who have been persecuted by the Nazi's, the fact remains that they are German. And no one is sympathetic to their cause.
When the war comes to an end in May 1945, Rosa longs to find out what became of her family. Daniel had promised that he would try and organise visas for them to join them in England but war broke out before that could happen and her family disappeared into the ether. She contacts the Jewish Information centre and the Red Cross in the hope that they may be able to trace her family and what became of them...but it seems the information she receives is a dead end.
Just as Rosa begins her search, Miriam embarks on her own journey to find her daughter with Jack Preston's help. It seems both women are at cross purposes throughout as so often they are close and yet so far from one another. In a city of millions in the wake of a debilitating war, can mother and daughter find each other against all odds? Can the promise of new life give them both hope?
Told in three parts, SEARCHING FOR MY DAUGHTER is a story of survival, of hope and of never giving up. It is not one woman's journey, but both women's journeys to new life and hopefully back to each other. So many stories focus on the horrors of the death camps, the hiding and persecution of the Jews and high-handedness of the Nazi rule. This story is different in that it's focus is on the aftermath. Both Miriam and Rosa's stories were unique and heartbreaking, so have your tissues handy.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book far more than I thought I would. It is compelling, heartbreaking and poignant...but it is also hopeful and inspiring. I would love to see more stories like this as those about life in the camps and so forth have flooded the market that readers are drowning in them. SEARCHING FOR MY DAUGHTER offers something different.
Overall, an engrossing read that is a poignant tear-jerker with a hopeful ending. One of the best I have read in a long time.
I would like to thank #LizTrenow, #NetGalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #SearchingForMyDaughter in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
She lives in Colchester with her artist husband, and they have two grown up daughters and three grandchildren.
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