May 7, 2024 by Aladdin
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Liv resides with her mother, a busy charity manager, and her father, an artist who works at home, in England. Her father's ninety year old mother, Bubbe, lives nearby, but is having lots of memory problems and has locked herself out of the house on several occasions. The mother, whose charity helps the elderly, would like to see Bubbe move to an assisted living facility, Rocklands, but the father is apprehensive. Liv is just embarrassed by her grandmother, and misses her grandfather. She's deeply involved with drama with her best friend, Karly, who has started to not only ignore Liv, but to be actively hostile towards her. When a school project on family history is assigned, Liv works with Gabi, who turns out to be a much better friend. Gabi has recently lost her own grandmother, and is understanding when Liv has to spend time helping to clean out Bubbe's house, and is even willing to join her. While working on these two projects, Liv finds information about her grandmother's life, tries to piece things together, and eventually locates a connection to the past for her grandmother to help her make peace with what happened to her during World War II.
In alternating chapters, we have the story of Mila, also known as Mimi, who has to leave her Jewish family along with her older sister Hanni and go live with strangers, the Van de Bergs, in Amsterdam. They no longer mention that they are Jewish, but cling to the story that they are cousins of young Dirk and Markus. Hanni is not content to lay low and stay safe, and starts to work with the Resistance, helping children be removed from dangerous situations. She works with Hugo, while Mimi makes friends with a neighbor, Willem, who has a dog, Bo. Mimi manages to make friends who are fairly understanding of her situation, but she misses her parents desperately, and also misses the closeness she has with Hanni, who is very secretive because she wants to keep Mimi safe. When a chance discovery puts people, including Hanni, in mortal danger, will Mimi ever be able to forgive herself?
The two storylines weave together very well; we know that Mimi is Bubbe, and Liv finds just enough information for her to approach Bubbe and get a few details. It's realistic that Bubbe wouldn't have wanted to talk about her past; few people did. There are few Holocaust survivors left, and this is a poignant story about a situation that would have happened again and again. It reminded me a bit of Moskin's I Am Rosemarie, although in that book, the main character ended up in a concentration camp, a fate that could have easily befallen Mimi. Nielsen's Resistance portrays experiences similar to Hanni's. I love that Kessler has turned her hand to historical fiction, and she does an excellent job. Not surprisingly, there is a wealth of British children's fiction about World War II that hasn't made it to this side of the pond, so I'm glad that this one did.
I LOVE the David Dean cover, although it makes me want to watch BBC period dramas, because a similar style is used in the introductions to The Durrells in Corfu and All Creatures Great and Small!
It's interesting to see Kessler change from fantasy books like Has Anyone Seen Jessica Jenkins? (2015), North of Nowhere (2013), A Year Without Autumn (2011), or the famous Emily Windsnap books (2003!) to more historical titles like When the World Was Ours.
I think all of the titles below are 2024 or 2023!
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