I came across a quote from Barbara Kingsolver when I was right in the midst of reading Shadows of Berlin by David R. Gillham, just out on April 5. Barbara said, “Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.” This was so appropriate that it lingered in my mind as I finished the book.
Rachel had come to New York City with her Uncle Fritz as displaced Jews from Berlin who had somehow managed to escape the Nazis. Her husband Aaron, who labels himself “a Jew from Flatbush” tries to understand but can’t fathom the trauma she brings with her. In the 1950s, she adjusts on the surface to the world of work, instant coffee, and navigating the city. Underneath, she hides her compulsion to steal a roll from a meal to go in her pocket in case she can’t find food. She allows the sink to remain stopped up rather than call the super because of her fear, knowing he is of German heritage. Then there is the most important image her mother ever painted before she went to her death in the gas chambers. When her Uncle Fritz finds it, is he helping her return to her own painting or is he working a scam for his own benefit?
In a bit of magical realism, Rachel communes with the ghost of her mother and the vision of a young girl that brings survivor guilt. The scenes rotate between the world that haunts her in war-torn Germany and the world of the new life she is trying to make in New York City with a maverick sister-in-law and a mother-in-law who wants nothing more than a grandchild.
To go back to Barbara’s point, this book gives understanding to what a young girl caught in the machinations of the Nazi regime and just trying to survive must have felt and to how hard it was to shake all that off and start a new life. Be prepared as you read for the temptation of “one more chapter.”