The Rabbit Girls
Anna Ellory
Lake Union Pub, Sep 1, 2019
396 pages
Historical, WWII
Purchased for Kindle app
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The cover is perfect for this book. The feather is the one Miriam puts in the door so that she can tell if anyone has been in the apartment. It took me a while to even notice the train tracks and building at the bottom, but they fit the story as well since everyone gets taken away in cattle cars. The blue is a shade that is cold and disheartening and spattered with blood. This is very fitting for this story.
The story itself starts with Miriam, a young woman trying to take care of her elderly father, who is dying. Miriam’s health is questionable. She seems to have some problems but doesn’t take the medicines prescribed for her and she doesn’t take very good care of herself. She focuses on taking care of her father. In doing so, she discovers a tattoo from Auschwitz on his wrist that she has never seen before. Further searching uncovers a woman’s uniform from the concentration camp and the seams are full of letters from a woman she’s never heard of. Some in a language she can’t read. Miriam becomes obsessed with these letters and even finds a translator for the ones she can’t read. We get drawn into the story revealed by the letters as well as the story of Miriam’s current life as both go haywire. The pace and tension of this dual story are enough to keep the reader from setting the book down. The anticipation as each small piece was revealed was almost painful at times. Sometimes you were involved in the story from the past and sometimes you were involved in Miriam’s story of the present. Both engulfed you as a reader and drew you in as so many stories from this era do.
If you are a fan of books about the aftermath of WWII and the concentration camps, this is definitely a book for you. This one gets down and dirty about some of what happened to some of the women there. Another trigger in this book is domestic violence and mental health, so be forewarned. If you can handle all of this, then this is a book for you. I highly recommend it. It was a riveting book.
a thoughtful reveal 