Review: Unforgettable Characters in Historical Fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 6, 2013
Everything I learned in history about World War II didn't cover this. The imagination of Michael Wallace has brought us some historical fiction with a mysterious title, a story that seems so real when reading it that we might think a chapter was left out of the history books. Sure, in school we read about the human cruelty, poverty and hardships of the people of Europe in a clinical way, but Wallace brings us a slice of all that on a human, personal level.We see a few privileged characters -- German SS officers mostly -- that live well and care nothing for anyone else. We see Germans that were not loyal to Hitler, and the paranoia that surrounds them, legitimate paranoia, it turns out. And we see a very unforgettable Spanish refuge girl, searching for her father while scratching out a living in Paris, finally accepting the role of prostitute as a last resort and the only way she can locate the only person she cares about finding.The most valuable asset an author offers is characters which draw the readers to care about them, and this cast is so credible the reader can't help but be drawn in emotionally. Wallace keeps readers engrossed with the characters intertwined into a tale of suspense and real-life horror. Adding to the intrigue is that we're sometimes wondering just who the good guys are.Unlike his other World War II story, "Blood of Vipers," this one is not written exclusively through the eyes of one man, and while the former was intriguing in its own way, this one hits a nerve that will touch many more readers, even we who were born after World War II and who are not invested in European culture.