Karolina’s Twins
The devastation of wartime often forces people to do the unthinkable, to make impossible choices, for the sake of survival, and the guilt that accompanies those actions can be pervasive.
In Karolina’s Twins, Lena, a Holocaust survivor, calls upon Catherine Lockhart, a lawyer, and her detective husband, Liam Taggart, to help her fulfill a promise she made to her best friend during the war: to find her friend Karolina’s two infant twins, who were born during the war. Lena’s son, believing that his mother is half-mad, and that Catherine and Liam are only after Lena’s money, tries to block the investigation on the grounds that there has never been any evidence that these twins existed. And why now, after so many years, is she seeking to find them?
As Lena tells her story to Catherine and Liam, the reader is transported back to Nazi-occupied Poland, accompanying Lena on her journey of survival. Every Holocaust survivor has his or her own story, and this one tells quite a unique one. A postscript at the end informs the reader that the book, though a novel, is based upon an account of a real story told to the author by a woman he met on a book tour. Ronald Balson is also the author of the highly acclaimed When We Were Brothers. In fact, readers were first introduced to the characters of Catherine and Liam in that book.
The only downside in this otherwise spellbinding book is that the reader is jolted back into the present, often without warning. This can be a little confusing, as there often is no clear division between past and present, such as chapter breaks, etc. Nonetheless, this novel is an absolute gem. It is compelling, it is original, and it is poignant.
