Lilac Girls

Lilac Girls written by Martha Hall Kelly is another fascinating novel that brings the reader back to the time of life leading up to and during World War II.  This novel though takes a very different angle on this time period in history.  Lilac Girls follows the lives of three different young women, each coming from different circumstances, each in a different country experiencing the war from avery different perspective.

Living in America, is a young New York socialite, Caroline Ferriday, working at the French consulate.  She is determined to help the war effort by sending care packages to French orphaned children.  As the war increases in intensity, and Hitler invades France Caroline works harder and harder to raise money to help the French children and then also a man important to her.  The character in the book of Caroline was inspired by the real woman, Caroline Ferriday who did bring the "Rabbits" or Lapin Ladies to the United States for surgeries to correct the horrible surgical tests they were subjected to during the war.  Martha Hall Kelly writes in a romance and fleshes out the Caroline's character for the novel but the facts about her are all true.

Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager is determined to help the war effort as a courier for the underground resistance movement.  Working in a movie theatre selling tickets could be a good cover for her more dangerous assignments.  A calm exterior and quick thinking is important as suspicious neighbors are watching ready to report unusual activity.

Newly graduated from medical school, Herta Oberheuser, accepts a job for a government medical position that seems like the answer to all her employment problems until she realizes that she is trapped in a male dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.  On the other side of the coin is Herta, also a real person whose character Kelly has developed for the novel with her imagination, but who did perform the horrific experiments on the women of Ravensbruck.  Trying to delve into her mind and understand why and how someone could be so heartless and cruel is what the author creates for the reader here.

Lilac Girls follows separately at first each of these young ladies as they run up against the unthinkable.  Each of the three main characters encounters the Nazi regime in a different way and as the novel moves forward the three stories interconnect.  Caroline and Kasia are trying to bring justice to those who history mistreated.  Herta is caught up in the Nazi machine and the cruelty of the time.  this is an incredibly well told story that shows yet again a different side to the Holocaust and how so many different groups of people were subjected to terrible situations.

Also amazing is the story within the story of the "Rabbits" at the concentration camp Ravensbruck. This part of the book is based on real life women.  Once again there is new information being written about and this time in this book, it is not the persecution of just Jewish women but of Polish Christian women as enemies of the state.  Author Kelly explains in her notes, "The Rabbits were women who while at Ravensbruck were used as test cases for operations.  They were known as Rabbits because after the tests were conducted on them they hopped around the camp and because they were the Nazi's experimental rabbits."