A Reading Vocation

This is not your typical WWII novel because it focuses on a lesser-explored aspect of the war -- namely the voyage of thousands of refugees, many of them of German descent, who fled the country in the wake of a Russian invasion. The story follows four narrators: a kind-hearted Lithuanian nurse, a Polish teen attempting to hide her ethnicity, a German artist who has defected, and a German soldier.

The writing is beautiful and at times heart-rending, from the protagonists' grueling winter journey to the harbor to the horror of the eventual shipwreck. The characters were well-developed with distinct voices. The book does not shy away from the horrors of war, but it also has enough moments of hope and light to keep it from being too bleak. Two things about the book did annoy me, though. First, I found it unbelievable that Joana would have had as much time as she did to pursue her romance with Florian and her relationship with the other characters once they were actually on the ship, where her skills as a nurse were needed and in incredibly short supply; and second, with as many who perished on the Wilhelm Gustolf, pretty much all our main characters defied the odds and survived, but I guess that's part of what keeps the book from being too bleak.

All in all, it is a masterful piece of historical fiction that does what the best of the genre does: makes history feel truly real, and awakens a desire to know more about the real lives that have been shaped by the tragedies of time.