I purchased this book for my own personal collection. I borrowed the audiobook from the library.
Publisher: Berkley Books / Penguin Audio
Published: March 19, 2019
Summary:
From the acclaimed author of Secrets of a Charmed Life and As Bright as Heaven comes a novel about a German American teenager whose life changes forever when her immigrant family is sent to an internment camp during World War II.
In 1943, Elise Sontag is a typical American teenager from Iowa – aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal US resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity.
The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences.
But when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her. In that devastating crucible, she must discover if she has the will to rise above prejudice and hatred and reclaim her own destiny, or disappear into the image others have cast upon her.
The Last Year of the War tells a little-known story of World War II with great resonance for our own times and challenges the very notion of who we are when who we’ve always been is called into question.
My thoughts:
This book had been on my shelf since it first came out – in fact, I had gone to see Susan Meissner when she was on tour for the book and had every intention of reading the book shortly after hearing her speak about it because it sounded so good but we all know how that goes – too many books, not enough time. And so it wasn’t until last Spring when I was participating in some buddy reads where we were reading through Susan’s backlist that I finally got to this one…and I’m so glad I did because it was just as good as I expected it to be and somehow as I was reading it, all of what Susan talked about came back to me. (And yes, I realize that this review is a bit late, but I’m working on getting caught up!)
There is nothing I love more than learning when I am reading, and I can tell you without a doubt that I learned a ton from this book. Immigration is such a timely topic and this book deals with that as well as internment camps that were for Germans right here in America. I knew about the internment camps for the Japanese during WWII, but I didn’t know we had ones for Germans, too. This is why I will never stop reading WWII stories – there is just so much that needs to be told and I still think we have only scratched the surface. And I would so much rather learn from an engaging story like this one than a boring old textbook any day!
This book grabbed my heart and never let go. I can’t imagine being young and having your life turned upside down just because you are from a country on a targeted list, or you have acted suspiciously. Luckily for Elise and Mariko, they wind up at the same internment camp and their need for friendship outweighs the differences between them.
If you love historical fiction, this is a must-read. I’ve read just about all of Susan Meissner’s books and this is one of my favorites.
Audio thoughts:
Even thought I had a print copy of the book, I love listening to Susan Meissner’s books. This one was narrated by Kimberly Farr and she did a fantastic job bringing the story to life.
