How is it four months since I posted here? Let's just say that my summer break was NOT at all restful, but I'm back in the rhythm of school and will hopefully be posting daily as I get caught up. I never stopped reading, just posting!
The Opera Sisters
By
Marianne Monson
Publisher: Shadow Mountain (September 6, 2022)
Publisher’s
Blurb:
Based on the true story of
the Cook sisters, who smuggled valuables out of 1930s Nazi Germany to finance a
daring, secret operation to help Jews find hope for a new life in England.
British sisters Ida and Louise Cook enjoy their quiet, unassuming lives in south London. Ida writes romance novels, and Louise works as a secretary. In the evenings, the sisters indulge in their shared love for opera, saving their money to buy records and attend performances throughout England and Europe, becoming well-known by both performers and fellow opera lovers.
But when Hitler seizes power in 1933, he begins targeting and persecuting German Jews, passing laws that restrict their rights and their lives. The sisters continue their trips to the German opera houses, but soon, Jewish members of the opera community covertly approach the sisters, worried that they will be stripped of their wealth and forced to leave their homes and the country. Danger looms on the horizon, threatening to spill across all of Europe’s borders.
Ida and Louise vow to help, but how can two ordinary working-class women with limited means make a difference?
Together with their beloved opera community, the sisters devise a plan to personally escort Jewish refugees from Germany to England. The success of the plan hinges on Ida and Louise’s ability to smuggle contraband jewelry and furs beneath the watchful eyes of the SS soldiers guarding various checkpoints. But how many trips can they make before someone blows a whistle? Or before the final curtain falls on Germany’s borders?
The Opera Sisters is a riveting and inspiring novel of two unlikely heroines whose courage and compassion gave hope to many Jews desperate to escape Nazi persecution.
My Thoughts:
The publisher’s blurb is a little sensational, but the basic idea is there. These two ordinary women saved the lives of 29 families by helping them to leave the oppression of the Nazi regime before WWII started.
Rather than a “normal” chapter format, this story is told in vignettes of varying lengths. Some of those vignettes are more about the history of the war than about the story at hand, but it all hangs together to give the reader the full picture of what Louise and Ida lived through. The scrupulous research is evident in the suggested reading list and lengthy end notes.
We mostly see Ida’s experience; Louise was able to leave London during the Blitz, but Ida lived through all the horror. We see her depression at not being able to save more people, and her horror at night after night of German bombing. We also see her hope in the little things, like a garden of crocuses in an otherwise obliterated street.
Because this is closely based on true lives and history, there’s not necessarily the dramatic climax that we look for in a work of fiction. But there is a very happy (at least for me) resolution.
It should be noted that the author is donating a portion of her earnings from this book to Holocaust memorials.
Possible Objectionable Material:
We see the atrocities of Jewish oppression,
including Kristallnacht and mention of concentration camps. There are
some quite descriptive passages of nights of German bombs raining down on
London, and the injuries that resulted. Technically, Ida and Louise are
smugglers, as they take the jewels and furs of their Jewish friends back to
England with them.
Who Might Like This Book:
Those who like stories based in truth. If you’re
interested in WWII heroes, and especially the ones you’ve never heard of
before, give this book a try. It’s appropriate, I think, for anyone from middle
school on up, although younger readers might find it a bit slow going.
Thank you to Shadow Mountain Publishing and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for my opinion.
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