The Dutch Wife
Books | Fiction / Historical / 20th Century / World War II
3.8
(175)
Ellen Keith
A sweeping story of love and survival during World War IIAMSTERDAM, MAY 1943. As the tulips bloom and the Nazis tighten their grip across the city, the last signs of Dutch resistance are being swept away. Marijke de Graaf and her husband are arrested and deported to different concentration camps in Germany. Marijke is given a terrible choice: to suffer a slow death in the labor camp or—for a chance at survival—to join the camp brothel.On the other side of the barbed wire, SS officer Karl MŸller arrives at the camp hoping to live up to his father’s expectations of wartime glory. When he encounters the newly arrived Marijke, this meeting changes their lives forever.Woven into the narrative across space and time is Luciano Wagner’s ordeal in 1977 Buenos Aires, during the heat of the Argentine Dirty War. In his struggle to endure military captivity, he searches for ways to resist from a prison cell he may never leave.From the Netherlands to Germany to Argentina, The Dutch Wife braids together the stories of three individuals who share a dark secret and are entangled in two of the most oppressive reigns of terror in modern history. This is a novel about the blurred lines between love and lust, abuse and resistance, and right and wrong, as well as the capacity for ordinary people to persevere and do the unthinkable in extraordinary circumstances.Don’t miss THE DUTCH ORPHAN! Ellen's next riveting novel set about a woman who must choose between family loyalty and her own safety.
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More Details:
Author
Ellen Keith
Pages
339
Publisher
Harlequin
Published Date
2018-09-04
ISBN
1488098662 9781488098666
Community ReviewsSee all
"This book takes place across two separate timelines: during WWII in Germany and in the 70s-80s in Argentina. Keith tries to bring these two timelines together by telling the story from three different character's perspective though I feel it was not too successful. You do not get a clear connection between the characters until the very end and even then, the timeline in Argentina appeared to be unconnected to the rest of the story. <br/><br/> If you happened to know the fact that there were a lot of Nazi war criminals who managed to escape the Nuremberg trials to Argentina, then the ending is predictable if not expected. The ending also left me with a lot of unanswered questions such as "does Marijke say what exactly happens to her afterwards?" and "what happens next to Karl?" <br/><br/> In terms of the writing, I think Keith put in a good effort to describe the conditions of the camps, specifically Buchenwald and has brought attention to a little known aspect of the concentrations camps."
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