Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

I am beginning to enjoy historical fiction more these days thanks to the book club selections we have been reading. Lilac Girls is one such book.  Set during WWII, it is three stories of women who each play a different role during the war but whose paths are destined to coincide. Caroline Ferriday, an American socialite and actress works to find assistance for French refugees, especially children. Kasia Kuzmerick is a young Polish teen who so wants to do something important to help with the war efforts she puts her own life in peril. Herta Oberheuser is a young German doctor who wants to work as a doctor in a predominantly male world that she would end up doing horrible things just to keep a job. While they would not all meet, their lives were definitely interconnected.

Caroline struggles with the proprieties of the late 1930s and early 1940s. She is an older woman for whom maintaining virtue is still a problem and she walks a thin line between spending time with her love, a married French man and doing all she needs to keep the children safe and well accommodated.  I love her spirit and determination. I also love that she goes beyond convention to do what is right.

Kasia is a true survivor. I think her personality keeps her alive after her capture and internment. The surgeries she had to endure are indicative of the experiments we read about carried out during the war. She wanted to do more to help and in the moments before her arrest she saved the life of another. She lived to confront her demons, see her sister choose to stay in America, realize the life she wanted was there with the same young man for whom she took risks in the first place and to continue to question authority whenever necessary.

Herta is the hardest to figure out. I get it that she was protecting her own family by taking the job at the camp but to actually carry out the surgeries and to be responsible for the death of others when you are a doctor sworn to help, not harm is beyond me.  I also don’t see how she was able to go on practicing after the war instead of being tried for war crimes and executed.

The book is well written, keeps one interested and provides reasonable conclusions. Did it all play out as I would have liked? No, but then life rarely does. Well worth the read.