The Girl from the Mountains
In 1938, when the family farm is confiscated by the Reich, young Magda Novák is directed to a mountain villa, where she is welcomed by a wealthy Jewish family as governess and helpmeet. Dr Tauber has ‘special exemptions’ to keep his family safe. Nevertheless, they are arrested and imprisoned in 1942, but not before Dr Tauber entrusts their newborn son to Magda. The Taubers’ arrest fuels Magda’s struggle for the rest of the novel. Smuggled out of the villa before it is commandeered by the Obergruppenführer, baby Samuel is lost to Magda, but she remains as staff, passing information to the resistance, some of whom are friends from the villa. Her inability to properly disguise her disfiguring facial birthmark compromises her efforts and soon enough puts her top of the Obergruppenführer’s wanted list with a bounty on her head. Magda is often at odds with the resistance group, but her distrustful nature and her vulnerability are part of the charm of her character.
The partisans can do little to withstand the Nazi invasion, so they run and hide and try to stay alive. Fleeing across the mountains to Slovakia, Magda learns to fight and shoot, relying on only one man she trusts. She nurses the wounded and risks herself on dangerous missions. Even if the world one day rights itself, Magda knows that her fellow partisans are too diverse – Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Gentiles and Jews – leading to perpetual infighting, with everyone with their own agenda for the war’s end. Through it all Magda’s task is two-fold: stay alive and save one Jewish boy.
The main interest here is the unusual time and place, which we don’t hear much about. The story is engrossing, well-researched, crackling with tension and full of descriptive detail. This will appeal to readers interested in WWII stories beyond the scope of the norm.
