For the Love of My Enemy
This story of a young woman in Windsor, California who falls in love with a German POW in a nearby detention camp during WWII, includes a strained father-daughter relationship and questions of identity. In 2011, Adina Ableman, old and dying of cancer, receives a notice: the Windsor Historical Society has something with her name on it. Adina enlists her daughter Talia to accompany her across the country to Windsor without explaining why. Chapter Two shifts to 1944, Adina’s long-secret story. She followed the profession of her mother, who died when she was twelve, into nursing and assisting her father, the only doctor in Windsor. After his beloved wife’s death, Dr. Henry Robbins became demanding and undemonstrative. Adina, ever a dutiful daughter, is urged by her friend Jeanie Mae to act like an adult and join the WACs with her. Yielding to her father’s insistence, Adina remains behind.
At the beginning of the book, editing problems distract. Sentences are choppy, and clichés and wordiness intrude. In Chapter Six, the plot picks up when Dr. Robbins is asked to treat German prisoners in Camp Windsor, with Adina as his nurse. A POW named Daniel who Adina met by chance, captured her imagination and now she will be inside the camp where he lives. Their forbidden love story and Adina’s discovery of her father’s secret build tension, and we wonder what that mysterious note reveals.
Despite lapses in style, the romance between Adina and Daniel, the interactions of townsfolk with POWs, Adina’s relationship with her father, and the revelation of their family secrets keep us reading. In the end, this is an illuminating story of a little-known aspect of the late days of WWII. Photos of Camp Windsor are included.
