The Nazi Housewife of Queens, New York
Written by first-time novelist Stacy Kean, this chilling tale is not for the timorous. This thoroughly researched book is based on the story of the real-life Nazi prison guard, Hermine Braunsteiner, known as “The Stomping Mare,” with names changed in the novel.
Helma Braun was a female concentration camp guard during the Second World War and is now living under a new identity in Queens, New York, in the 1950s. Hannah Goldberg, who survived the prison camp, watched Braun murder her sister in front of her. Hannah spends years tracking Braun down, but the obsession takes an appalling toll on her marriage and on those close to her.
This novel contains graphic descriptions of the worst type of violence that one human can inflict on another. Braun is obsessed with exacting revenge for abuses she suffered in her youth. She does so through unthinkable violence against defenseless prisoners. Her justification is that she was merely “following orders.” The dialogue is sometimes wooden, and scenes are often explained, rather than shown through the characters’ actions. The minor characters occupy much of the narrative but slow down the pace of the action and perhaps do not contribute to the main thrust of the novel.
Hannah Goldberg engenders empathy and rage within the reader’s mind, but getting a reader to identify with Helma Braun, a monster and remorseless to the very end, is a challenge, no matter how grim her upbringing. However, the concept of a female “monster” is so rare that it makes the reader want to understand her.
Stacy Kean crafts the ending deftly, with a plot twist that leaves us wondering what we would have done if we were Hannah.
