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Book Reviewed by:Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold.
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined - an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards of Good Breeding.
Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany's defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband's ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband's brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.
First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin's mother, the beautiful and naive Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resister's wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.
As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband's resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war—each with their own unique share of challenges.
Written with the devastating emotional power of The Nightingale, Sarah's Key, and The Light Between Oceans, Jessica Shattuck's evocative and utterly enthralling novel offers a fresh perspective on one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Combining piercing social insight and vivid historical atmosphere, The Women in the Castle is a dramatic yet nuanced portrait of war and its repercussions that explores what it means to survive, love, and, ultimately, to forgive in the wake of unimaginable hardship.
Regret is a visceral presence in the novel, a testament to the author's talent for sustaining tension. One character describes a man from her past as "a body washed up in her mind, dragging the tangle of her own bad choices like so much kelp." The concepts of complicity and resistance are always politically relevant, such is the world we live in, but Shattuck provides an excellent, subtle reminder of what it looks and feels like to be on the wrong side of history...continued
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(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
The events of The Women in the Castle are set off by a failed attempt at assassinating Adolf Hitler conducted by the husbands of the main characters and their fellow resisters. This is based on the real-life July Plot, also known as Operation Valkyrie.
The plan was organized and executed in 1944 by high-ranking German military officials who disapproved of Hitler's leadership and hoped to bring about a quick end to World War II. The strategy called for detonating two bombs inside a steel bunker where Hitler would be conducting a meeting with about 20 German officers. The bomb would be planted by Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, chief of staff of the reserve army. Once Hitler was dead, the reserves would rise up against the Nazis.
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Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest
A vivid and gripping tale of endurance in the wake of World War II. ... The writing is magnificent, as is Shattuck's ability to render unimaginable circumstances with tremendous clarity and compassion. A joy to read, this is a beautiful and important book.
