Footprints in the Forest-- A Novel of A Female WWII Partisan Based On Fact

I wrote in my review of Karolina's Twins on this blog that I was just about burned out on the Holocaust.  Now I can say the same about WWII in general.  I've read way too much about WWII this year.  I admit that I was reluctant to accept author Jeannette Katzir's review request for Footprints in the Forest.  I accepted a free copy because I've never read about a real woman who was a WWII partisan.  This is a novel, but it's based on the life of the author's mother.  I wanted to see if there were significant differences between the fictional WWII Resistance heroines I'd read about, and one that actually existed.

                                 

Like a number of popular books, Footprints in the Forest is a dual time frame novel.  It alternates WWII Poland with New York in the late 1940's.   I found the WWII chapters more interesting and compelling.  The American portions of the book were lighter in tone which some readers may consider a relief from reading about characters who are continually running for their lives.

In some ways, Chana the protagonist, reminded me of Jacqueline, the female French Resistance fighter in Marge Piercy's  Gone To Soldiers which I reviewed here.  They were both changed by their experiences, but I thought that Jacqueline became stronger and Chana emerged from WWII more fragile.   I understood why Chana  was so traumatized, but I preferred her fellow female partisan, Leeza who was more of a survivor type.   It was fortunate that Chana had Leeza's friendship because she certainly depended on Leeza for emotional support.  Chana also couldn't have survived without the steadiness of her brother, Isaac, who was always there for her.

Chana's developing art career in the U.S. was the aspect of the American narrative that I found most appealing.    I enjoyed reading about her creative process, how she learned to paint in oils and how her relationship with the gallery owner eventually evolved into a friendship.  On the other hand, I found Chana's stereotypical fantasy of the perfect wedding rather annoying.   It was also a very American idea of weddings, and it didn't seem likely to me that a Polish Jew from a religious background would have become so Americanized in her expectations that quickly.

 There were a few names that I thought were inappropriate like the Russian partisan whose first name was Barry and the Polish Jew who had a brother named Thomas.  There was also a Hebrew error.  Alov ha'shalom  (may he rest in peace) is correct if the dead individual is male.  If the dead individual is female, it should be aleha  ha'shalom.  Yet these are minor problems.

The background otherwise seemed authentic and well-developed.   I felt that I was there in the forest with Chana trying to survive Nazis, severe weather and other dangers.  This was a gripping portrayal of the life story of Katzir's mother.



                                   

Karolina's Twins-- The Secret of a Holocaust Survivor

Novels dealing with WWII have been extremely popular.  I think they have replaced Tudor themed books as the most published type of historical fiction.  When they focus on Holocaust themes, they are very emotionally intense.  Unfortunately, because of their intensity readers tend to burn out on them eventually.  So I predict that there will be another shift in the historical fiction market in the near future.

As someone whose family was severely impacted by the  WWII Holocaust, I actually avoided Holocaust themed novels for a long time.   I felt that they would be too painful for me to read.   I'm not sure what changed for me, but I started to read Holocaust fiction a few years ago.   At this point, I have begun to burn out.  I don't think that it's a good thing for anyone to read too much about genocide because it blunts the feelings of horror and outrage that should be the normal response to these events.  Yet I am still open to reading Holocaust novels that are unusual in their focus, or which educate me about an aspect of the WWII Holocaust that was previously unknown to me.

Karolina's Twins by Ronald Balson is a different sort of Holocaust novel. It is a contemporary/historical legal thriller.  It is also the third in a series dealing with the cases of private investigator Liam Taggart and lawyer Catherine Lockhart.  It centers on locating a pair of twins who have been missing since WWII.  I received a request to review this book through the publisher and downloaded it from Net Galley in return for this honest review.

                                 

I knew that the Jewish community in pre-WWII Poland located in the cities and larger towns was very different from that of my own shtetl ancestors.  A shtetl is a small insular village composed entirely of Jews.  They were isolated from the outside world, and had very little knowledge of Polish society.  Their way of life was eradicated by the Nazis.  The contemporary Haredi, who are more commonly known as Hasidim, have done their best to preserve it. Yet it's difficult to duplicate the culture of a rural village in an urban environment.

Lena Woodward, the fictional client in Karolina's Twins, came from a Polish town that still exists.  Her father was a tailor who was also a WWI hero. Due to his military background, he was highly regarded by local Poles.  The family was Polish speaking rather than Yiddish speaking, and was very much integrated into Polish society.  I had actually never read about Polish Jews who were so identified with Poland.  They reminded me of what I've read about German Jews.  So it didn't surprise me to learn that Lena's father had business and family ties in Berlin.  Through research I discovered a Jewish memorial website which stated that Jewish tailors who emigrated to Germany from Lena's town of  Chrzanow were an important factor in the establishment of the German clothing industry in the early 20th century.

Lena's story was told to Catherine Lockhart as part of the investigation in the present.  Normally, I would be very critical of a novel whose structure was so expository because it usually lacks immediacy.   Yet Lena's narrative contained dialogue and other characteristics of flashbacks that made it more engaging, and lent it dramatic power.  It allowed me to visualize events.  This is a key difference that made expository storytelling more successful in Karolina's Twins.
Ronald Balson also handled suspense very well.   The plot was organized so that both the investigation and Lena's account reached a climax at the same time.

Lena was a courageous woman who was willing to take risks that most people would consider unthinkable, but her circumstances called for bold action.   In the present, this Holocaust survivor retained her mental acuity and vitality.  Yet she had regrets which caused her to conceal a crucial aspect of her past.  It's  this secret that brings her into a painfully distressing legal conflict with her son.  It lies at the heart of the narrative. Catherine's empathy and consistent supportive attitude toward Lena eventually allows the truth to surface.

Catherine impressed me with her willingness to place her career in jeopardy out of loyalty to her client.  Although the danger to Catherine in the contemporary storyline wasn't equivalent to Lena's traumatic experiences, there were suspenseful elements.  Catherine had the mental toughness to rise to the occasion.   So this book had two strong female protagonists.  This makes Karolina's Twins a novel that I can recommend to the audience for this blog.





                                  

Last Stop Klindenspiel: A Dark Circus in Post World War II Poland

I'm always up for a circus novel.  That's why I downloaded Last Stop Klindenspiel from Amazon.  The last circus fiction I reviewed here on Book Babe was the YA paranormal romantic circus novel Girl on a Wire.  You can find that review here .  Last Stop Klindenspiel by Marta Tandori is very different in tone.  It's supposed to be a historical prequel to what looks to me like a contemporary Los Angeles noir  mystery series.  I haven't read the series, but the Kindle edition of Last Stop Klindenspiel contains several excerpts from the Kate Stanton series.  In the series timeline it is  established that Kate Stanton was once Katya Holberg.  I don't know how fans of the Kate Stanton series react to the revelations in this novel, but I found that the prequel stands very much on its own.

                                                         

My identification with Katya made this a tough read because she experienced so many traumatic events during and after World War II.  I had to take frequent breaks from the book in order to cope with its raw intensity.

 Many readers will not have heard of the Nazi Project Lebensborn.   This was as effort to increase the number of  so called "pure Aryan" children.   The term Aryan originally referred to a linguistic group, not a race. Katya was brought into the world as part of the Lebensborn Project.  Her father, a self-absorbed Nazi officer, had a sexual relationship with Sonia Holberg, a Norwegian woman who became Katya's mother.  After World War II the women who participated in Lebensborn suffered in the backlash against anyone associated with the Nazis, and so did their children.  Before reading Tandori's novel,  I was aware of the Lebensborn children, but had no real awareness of their post-war persecution.   This is an aspect of the post-war environment that should be more widely known.

The circus Klindenspiel was supposed to be a haven for Katya.  She would be able to exhibit the skills as a contortionist that she had learned from her mother.  Yet the young performers at Klindenspiel  were submerged in a miasma of fear and antagonism toward their superiors and each other.  Katya wanted to understand why there was so much negativity.   She idealistically wanted to improve the lives of everyone at Klindenspiel, and she received unexpected support from some very unlikely sources.

If you are looking for circus lore or vocabulary, you won't find that sort of thing in Last Stop Klindenspiel , but you will find some very realistic descriptions of training and choreography for acrobatic routines.  The vocabulary seems to originate from the world of gymnastics, and I have some familiarity with it.

What I appreciated about this book was the history, the character relationships, the suspense, the surprising plot twists  and the imaginative concept.  Marta Tandori did everything right in this book.

I'm still mystified about how Katya Holberg eventually became Kate Stanton, but I was completely satisfied by the resolution of this particular chapter in her life.