The Sister Behind the Berlin Wall
Are you ready for the latest in that blossoming subgenre of books about women in Occupied France? Orphaned young adult sisters Léa and Rose get drawn into a circle of Résistants. All of the wine of their vintner employer is supposed to be converted into ethanol for der Führer, and when Léa is caught secretly helping to hold back some real wine for the black market, she is sent as a forced worker to Germany.
Rose, an artist, volunteers to go with her so they won’t be separated. In a German factory town producing gunsights, Léa falls in love with the Czech doctor, while Rose attracts the unwanted attention of the local Nazi Kriminalinspektor, who forms a strange crush on her. She parlays his cold infatuation into favours for the Russian women prisoners and into transferring her beau from bomb-targeted Berlin to her own village. But the favours have a price.
As the war ends in German defeat and the Russian troops approach with vengeance on their minds, Rose must decide whether she can pay the cost of ransoming her sister’s and friends’ escape. If you can get past the clunky title (which gives away the main plot point), you may like the rest of the book. It’s surprisingly unarousing emotionally, considering everything that happens, but makes an all-right read.
