Book picks similar to
The Forgotten Man by E.J. WOOD
holocaust
ww2
historical-fiction
historial-fiction
The Dressmaker's Son
Abbi Sherman Schaefer - 2013
Rachael's family comes to America to start a new life after fleeing the pogroms in Russia. Rebekah comes to America with her son, Samuel, fleeing his father, Misha, a Russian soldier with whom she had an affair and has threatened to take him away from her so he will not grow up as a Jew and the son of a cobbler. Set in the Lower East Side of New York and pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, Russia, both women adjust to life in America until Misha kidnaps Samuel and returns with him to Russia. How Rebekah rises to the challenge of earning enough money as a designer of women's gowns to return to St. Petersburg to find her son, and the difficulties she encounters while there, including murder and prison, show the reader the full extent of a mother's ingenuity and determination when it comes to her child. Rachael also faces the possibility of losing a child to war when her son Solomon enlists in the army as America's entry into World War I approaches.
Stella's Secret: A True Story of Holocaust Survival
Jerry L. Jennings - 2005
But it is Stella’s voice, the amazing way that she tells her story, that makes this Holocaust story so unique, powerful and endearing. The reader listens to Stella’s stunning simplicity of expression, her use of Polish and Yiddish phrases, her humor, her all-so-frequent grammatical errors – and is charmed. It is a story that only Stella Yollin can tell, and it can only be told in Stella’s sweet and incomparable way.
Lilac Girls
Martha Hall Kelly - 2016
But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France. An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences. For the ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. Once hired, though, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power. The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland—as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.
Until We Meet Again
Rosemary Goodacre - 2019
An office worker, she lives at home, along with her parents and spirited younger brother, Bertie. But her life is transformed when she meets handsome young man, Edmond Derwent, son of one of the wealthiest families in the small town of Larchbury, and student at Cambridge University.The couple are falling deeply in love when war breaks out and, eager to do his duty for England, Edmond signs up as an officer. The couple plan to be wed, eager to start a new life together - but their happiness is short-lived when Edmond is sent to Flanders to lead his men into battle. Amy trains as a VAD nurse and is soon sent to France, where she sees the true horror of war inflicted on the brave young men sent to fight.Separated by war, Edmond and Amy share their feelings through emotional letters sent from the front line. But when Edmond is critically wounded at Ypres, their love faces the biggest test of all – can their love stay strong while the world around them is crumbling?A romantic, emotional saga set in WW1 – readers of Rosie Goodwin, Katie Flynn and Val Wood will be captivated by this story of love.
Beneath a Scarlet Sky
Mark T. Sullivan - 2017
He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders.Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.
The Executioner From The Silent Valley: A Historical Fiction Novel
I.V. Olokita - 2019
He victimizes people for being Jews or for just being alive. He is an old Nazi criminal who escaped to Brazil and was caught and prosecuted. He is now forced to write his memoirs as part of his punishment – the same punishment he used to give Jews at the concentration camp. This punishment makes him remember and re-live his cruelty as the concentration camp commander and as a man. Deus Esperanca learns from his mother that what he believed to be his family’s history, was just a bunch of lies. He discovers that his real father is Klaus Holland – the sadistic Nazi fugitive. Having this information and his father being aware of what he knows, their lives intertwine and create chaos.
The Takeaway Men
Meryl Ain - 2020
In the years after World War II, they experience the difficulties of adjusting to American culture as well as the burgeoning fear of the Cold War. Years later, the discovery of a former Nazi hiding in their community brings the Holocaust out of the shadows. As the girls get older, they start to wonder about their parents’ pasts, and they begin to demand answers. But it soon becomes clear that those memories will be more difficult and painful to uncover than they could have anticipated. Poignant and haunting, The Takeaway Men explores the impact of immigration, identity, prejudice, secrets, and lies on parents and children in mid-twentieth-century America.
The Survivors
Kate Furnivall - 2018
Klara Janowska and her daughter Alicja have walked for weeks to get to Graufeld Displaced Persons camp. In the cramped, dirty, dangerous conditions they, along with 3,200 others, are the lucky ones. They have survived and will do anything to find a way back home.But when Klara recognises a man in the camp from her past, a deadly game of cat and mouse begins. He knows exactly what she did during the war to save her daughter. She knows his real identity. What will be the price of silence? And will either make it out of the camp alive?
Proud of You
Mary Wood - 2014
Together they discover that they have a connection to the same man, Ralph D'Olivier, and vow to unravel the mystery of his death.After narrowly escaping capture by the Germans, Alice is lifted out of France and taken to a hospital for wounded officers where she meets Lil, a working-class northern girl, working as a nurse. Though worlds apart, Alice and Lil form a friendship, and Alice discovers Lil is also linked to Ralph D'Olivier.Soon, the war irrevocably changes each of these women and they are thrust into a world of heartache and strife beyond anything they have had to endure before. Can they clear Ralph's name and find a lasting love and happiness for themselves?
The Book of Harlan
Bernice L. McFadden - 2016
After his prominent minister grandfather dies, Harlan and his parents move to Harlem, where he becomes a musician. Soon, Harlan and his best friend, trumpeter Lizard Robbins, are lured across the Atlantic Ocean to perform at a popular cabaret in the Parisian enclave of Montmartre—affectionately referred to as “The Harlem of Paris” by black American musicians.When the City of Light falls under Nazi occupation, Harlan and Lizard are thrown into Buchenwald, the notorious concentration camp in Weimar, Germany. The experience irreparably changes the course of Harlan’s life. Based on exhaustive research and told in McFadden’s mesmeric prose, The Book of Harlan skillfully blends the stories of McFadden’s familial ancestors with those of real and imagined characters.
Orphan Girl
Lila Beckham - 2014
She never overcame her humble beginnings and when Willie Eubanks rescued her from the orphanage by marrying her, she ended up right back where she started. Living in the same cabin, she was born in twelve and a half years earlier. However, she grew to love Willie and was determined that she and Willie were not going to end up as her parents had. In addition, she wanted to make sure her children were not going to have to suffer through the same experiences she had.
Embracing Destiny
Vivian Rose Lee - 2015
Life for Randa in the Brewster household was hard because of an uppity aunt and a pair of cousins who considered the young girl beneath their standing. They labeled her the shame of the elite black Brewster family, a dark mark on the good Brewster name, and made her life miserable because of it. Unwanted and unloved in a house filled with strangers, things looked bleak for Randa, but her circumstances took a sudden and dramatic change when her grandfather was made aware of her plight. Vowing to her that things would be different from here on out, her grandfather took a shy, introverted little girl under his wing and over time molded her into a strong, intelligent young woman. After the death of her beloved grandfather, the now wealthy Randa, thanks to a deathbed blessing, moved to Tullahassee, Oklahoma with the desire to locate the mother she was taken away from, but what she found instead was a life she never imagined she would ever have.
The Master of Ships: Charles's Story
Naomi Finley - 2019
Devastated, he numbs the pain with drink. Leaving a tavern one night he stumbles upon a cloaked female figure lying in a dark alley. Charles helps the stranger, unaware the chance encounter would eventually alter his life forever when hidden secrets and feelings are revealed. A few years later, he returns to London to search for this women with the goal of setting right his wrongs of the past. Imprisoned by fear, will unraveled secrets change everything for Charles after he finds her? ISABELLA became smitten with the handsome but troubled businessman from America who rescued her. He fled just as their flourishing friendship turned passionate. When the apprenticeship system is abolished, Isabella has no choice but to create another life for herself. She disappears without a hint of her whereabouts, carrying a secret with the potential to ruin everything Charles holds dear. Time passes when an innocent outing finds Isabella reliving emotions of love and abandonment she thought were buried. Can she still find the peace and safety she so desires? Or will fate continue to unleash a life of inescapable affliction?
Jakob's Colours
Lindsay Hawdon - 2015
Austria, 1944: Jakob, a gypsy boy—half Roma, half Yenish—runs, as he has been told to do. With shoes of sack cloth, still bloodstained with another's blood, a stone clutched in one hand, a small wooden box in the other. He runs blindly, full of fear, empty of hope. For hope lies behind him in a green field with a tree that stands shaped like a Y. He knows how to read the land, the sky. When to seek shelter, when not. He has grown up directing himself with the wind and the shadows. They are familiar to him. It is the loneliness that is not. He has never, until this time, been so alone. "Don't be afraid, Jakob," his father has told him, his voice weak and wavering. "See the colors, my boy," he has whispered. So he does. Rusted ochre from a mossy bough. Steely white from the sap of the youngest tree. On and on, Jakob runs. Spanning from one world war to another, taking us across England, Switzerland, and Austria, Jakob's Colours is about the painful legacies passed down from one generation to another, finding hope where there is no hope, and color where there is no color.
I Will Not Weep in this Place
Angela Berquist - 2010
Their main goal is survival, but will they survive? It is a question that, in the end, a reader must ask themselves.