BookBrowse Reviews News of Our Loved Ones by Abigail DeWitt

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News of Our Loved Ones is a bittersweet tale of the harsh realities of war and how a handful of small decisions can change the fate of an entire family.

The Delasalle family of Abigail DeWitt's News of Our Loved Ones are no strangers to the dark specter of war. Their small French city has been occupied by Nazis for more than four years, and they've struggled to survive on meager rations and shrinking hope as friends and neighbors have disappeared into the belly of the German beast. But the Allied troops are coming closer, and the whispers of liberation are a beacon of hope for the Delasalles and the other people of Caen to cling to during the dark nights. What they don't know is that Caen lies right in the target zone for the attack on Normandy, and her citizens are in more danger than they've ever been. News of Our Loved Ones is a story of war and loss, but it's also a story of family and love and how our stories shape the next generation.

Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different member of the Delasalle family or a close family friend. Although the different narratives seem disconnected at first, each voice eventually weaves into a single story—that of the Delasalles and the war that robbed them of their peaceful lives. For some characters, the narrative traces their experience during the war and then follows them into their lives after; for others, the chapters are largely flashbacks, revealing family secrets and the tightening of bonds between those who are family by blood and those who become family by circumstance. And for a few, the stories are cut short, their voices unexpectedly silenced. It's these open-ended narratives that drive home the fact that life is precious and fleeting, especially during war.

This reality is also explored through the realistic portrayal of how a single decision can completely change a person's life. For Geneviève, the eldest Delasalle daughter, traveling to Paris to audition for a position at the National Conservatory means she's out of harm's way when the bombs begin to fall on D-Day. For Francoise, Genevieve's youngest sister, a quick trip to the garden shed means she's outside when her home is destroyed. And for Andre, a friend of the Delasalles, the decision to spend what could be his last day painting provides a connection to the SS officer who comes to take him to a concentration camp. These seemingly inconsequential choices drastically change the characters' lives and help them survive when death comes calling. However, their feelings of relief are overshadowed by guilt and sadness for those who weren't so lucky, reiterating the trauma of war and the realization that their lives are undeniably changed. Even years after the Nazis have been defeated and they have grown up and begun their own families, the Delasalle sisters still grieve their wartime losses, and that grief is eventually passed on to a new generation.

Geneviève's daughter Polly is fascinated by her mother's stories of war-torn France, and she spends much of her time imagining herself in the past, romanticizing the danger her family faced. For Polly, the stories are her way of connecting with her mother and understanding her dual French-American identity. While one may view their own personal history as a simple matter of fact, for others, that history can reveal a new world and expose the hidden scars and truths that have shaped an individual. The stories may be painful to tell and to hear, but they have the power to forge connections between people with different life experiences. News of Our Loved Ones may be fiction, but it is reminiscent of so many war survival stories, the legacies of which still impact us today. DeWitt has created a short but memorable tale of how World War II altered the fate of a single family, a tale that's as hopeful as it is heartbreaking.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in January 2019, and has been updated for the January 2020 edition. Click here to go to this issue.