Review: The Women in the Castle

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The Women in the Castle" is a historical novel about three German women during and after WWII. This is the story of Marianne von Lingenfels, an aristocrat, whose husband was a resistor and was executed in the failed July 20, 1944, attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Marianne makes a promise to her best friend, Connie, to find and protect the resistors' wives and the children in the event the plot would fail. After the war, Marianne locates Connie's son, Martin, and then his wife, Bonita. She also locates Ania and her two sons and brings them all to live with her in the Bavarian Castle owned by her husband's family. Although she continues to look for more survivors, she will only succeed to rescue these two women and their children.

This book shows the other side of the coin... the German side. It portraits how not all German believed and followed Hitler's ideologies and that many of them tried to stop this terrible war. It also portraits the challenges the German population endured after the war to rebuild their country and their lives.

This is a wonderful story of sin and redemption. A must read.

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