I have actually allowed myself to enjoy a few great titles in this genre recently.
Here are three titles you can't go wrong choosing.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris - is based on a true story (I love anything based on facts). Lale, a Slovakian Jew, is taken to a concentration camp. Despite the hardships he faces, his ability to speak several languages gives him some safety and he becomes the tattooist, giving each prisoner the number on their arm that will mark them forever. While doing his job one day, Lale meets a beautiful woman that he can't get out of his mind. The two of them begin a romance of sorts in the worst possible place. They also vow to make it through the war and spend the rest of their lives together. This horrible story is filled with great hope and it's not a book I'll easily forget.
Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein- this is another Holocaust story that moves seamlessly between several time periods. Ava has been estranged from her mother for some time. When she receives news that her mom, Ilse, has died and a packet of letters her mom tried to send to a childhood friend, Renate, Ava's perception of the mother she never felt close to is greatly altered. Readers meet Ilse and Renate as young girls before their world fell apart, and then at various points in time as Ilse joined the Hitler Youth Movement and turned her back on Renate, her Jewish friend. As a reader I appreciated how Epstein allowed me to relate to Ilse because of the story centering around her daughter, Ava. I had to remind myself periodically that Ilse was certainly not a character I should like because of her ties to the Nazis, but Epstein does an amazing job of creating characters that feel real and aren't all good or all bad.
Learning to See: A Novel of Dorothea Lange, the Woman Who Revealed the Real America by Elise Hooper - one of my favorite thing to read are fictionalized biographies of little known people in history. (Marie Benedict and Melanie Benjamin are two of my favorite authors of this type of book). Hooper's novel focuses on Dorothea Lange, a photographer best known for her pictures of Americans during the Great Depression. Aside from knowing that Lange was a photographer, I knew nothing else about her. I truly enjoyed learning about her childhood when she was stricken with polio that left her with a permanent limp, her ambition that allowed her to make a living as a portrait photographer, and her troubled marriage. Hooper's novel is fantastic and piqued my interest to learn more about this amazing woman.
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