7/25/2023 0 Comments The last year of the war![]() ![]() There is nothing I love more than learning when I am reading, and I can tell you without a doubt that I learned a ton from this book. (And yes, I realize that this review is a bit late, but I’m working on getting caught up!) And so it wasn’t until last Spring when I was participating in some buddy reads where we were reading through Susan’s backlist that I finally got to this one…and I’m so glad I did because it was just as good as I expected it to be and somehow as I was reading it, all of what Susan talked about came back to me. This book had been on my shelf since it first came out – in fact, I had gone to see Susan Meissner when she was on tour for the book and had every intention of reading the book shortly after hearing her speak about it because it sounded so good but we all know how that goes – too many books, not enough time. The Last Year of the War tells a little-known story of World War II with great resonance for our own times and challenges the very notion of who we are when who we’ve always been is called into question. In that devastating crucible, she must discover if she has the will to rise above prejudice and hatred and reclaim her own destiny, or disappear into the image others have cast upon her. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences.īut when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her. The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. Then her father, a legal US resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. In 1943, Elise Sontag is a typical American teenager from Iowa – aware of the war but distanced from its reach. ![]() I borrowed the audiobook from the library.įrom the acclaimed author of Secrets of a Charmed Life and As Bright as Heaven comes a novel about a German American teenager whose life changes forever when her immigrant family is sent to an internment camp during World War II. I purcha sed this book for my own personal collection. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |