The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner

For several years my husband's department secretary was a Japanese American who came of age in a WWII internment camp. Her stories were the first I had encountered. Later I learned that German Americans were also identified as suspect hostile aliens and sent to internment camps. But before reading The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner I had not heard of the repatriation program, exchanging interned families for POWs held by Germany and Japan.

The Last Year of the War is Elise's life story. Her parents were born in Germany and love their homeland but embraced America wholeheartedly. Elise is a typical American girl.

Mariko is another American born child of immigrant parents. Her Japanese parents have held to their heritage and identity.

Circumstantial evidence flag their fathers as potential alien enemies, their goods and money confiscated, and the fathers interned. At Crystal City their families can join them, but with the agreement that they may be repatriated to their homelands.

Elise is lost and angry until she meets Mariko. They bond and become best friends, sharing dreams of turning eighteen and moving to New York City together to pursue careers.

Through these sympathetic characters, readers learn about life at the internment camps, and, when Elise's family is sent to Germany, life in war-torn Germany.

Elise struggles with being an American in the land of her enemies, while to her parents it is their homeland. Mariko's America dreams are shattered by her traditional parents' expectations.

Readers of Historical Fiction will love this book. I commend Meissner for bringing this aspect of American history to light, especially in the context of America's current distrust of immigrants.

Meissner sidesteps vilification of the German people, noting that Elise's German family were required to hang a portrait of Adolph Hitler on the wall and describing the destruction of German cities and civilian losses and hardships. The perils of war are addressed, including the harassment and rape of German girls by the occupation army after the war.

Elise does find her place in the world, not the life she dreamt of as a teenager, and she finds love.

Learn more about Crystal City here.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Last Year of the War
by Susan Meissner
Berkley Publishing Group
Pub Date: 19 Mar 2019
Hardcover $26.00 (USD
ISBN: 9780451492159

As Bright as Heaven: Surviving And Thriving

In 1918 the Bright family leaves a tobacco farm in Quakertown, PA to move to center city Philadelphia. The father is to work for his uncle's funeral parlor, which he would then inherit. They have suffered the devastating--but at that time all too common loss--of a baby. Their grief travels with them into their new life.

In the autumn of 1918 the Spanish Influenza hits Philadelphia, leaving over 12,000 dead in its wake. The mortuary fills and the uncle dies. When a daughter falls ill, the mother keeps her alive but, worn down, succumbs and dies of the disease. Friends die, and a beloved neighbor leaves for the trenches of France. Amidst all this loss, one of the daughters rescues an infant in distress in a house full of the dead, and the child becomes the family's heart and reason to go on.

The women, the mother and her four daughters, speak in alternating chapters, their unique personalities and perspectives revealed through their own words. Philadelphia has a distinct presence, although fictionalized and geographically ambiguous at times. (The cover photo shows Logan Circle with City Hall in the background.) The time period, between 1918 and 1926, covers the flu and the war but also prohibition and the rise of the speakeasy.

The story is about people who suffer great loss and live through horrible times, who carry their ghosts and demons with them, until they are able to see that life goes on and somehow the world can be bright again.

My Goodreads friends have rated this a four or five star book and found it very engaging. So I will safely say that readers of historical fiction and woman's fiction will enjoy Meissner's book.

SPOILER ALERTS

I had several issues with the writing.

I lacked emotional connection to the characters. It could be the multitude of voices, but I think it was because the story is too much told and not enough shown. For instance, one daughter develops a crush on an older man who goes to war. He is gone for the bulk of the novel, and returns at age thirty-eight and the girl is still "in love." There is not enough interaction between them to make me believe she is "in love" with him for life. It seems contrived.

I found the book preachy and full of clichéd lessons. The ex-soldier, once returned home, consoles his now grown-up lover that the war was horrible and he had to heal. All this healing happened off camera and lacks emotional impact; he is just telling her a lesson he learned. Make peace with the past, he advises. Later, the foundling brother's family is discovered to be alive. The father forgives the Brights, saying that he was angry for a long time by his losses and is finally seeing there is good in life, ending with the old chestnut of 'we are all doing the best we can with what we have'. Nothing new here, kids.

And the story wrapped up with far too many predictable and implausible outcomes. I won't even go into them. There is talk of fate and destiny and finding patterns.

END OF SPOILER ALERT

Consequently, although I had looked forward to reading As Bright As Heaven, especially for its setting and the time period, I found the book an average read. For those who are not familiar with the Spanish Influenza, who like feel-good endings, and who want the horror of history softened by wish fulfillment romantic endings, this is the book for you. It was not my cup of tea.

As Bright as Heaven
by Susan Meissner
Berkley Publishing Group
Pub Date 06 Feb 2018
Hardcover $26.00
ISBN: 9780399585968