This book was chosen as this month's selection for my book club. The story is very well written and engaging. In fact, I'd say that it is one of the best stories I've ever read. I'm sure Jenna Blum did a lot of research to be sure that her fictional story was based on historical facts. The story helps you understand the dire things that people must do to survive during dire times. I highly recommend this book to those who are curious about how Germans survived during Hitler's terrible reign in Germany as well as to those who enjoy a good story.

This book was heartily recommended to me by a fellow traveler on an airplane to Minneapolis, of all places!! I eagerly anticipated its arrival and read it in an afternoon--stretched into late evening. Once I'd read the part describing the funeral in Minnesota, I really couldn't believe much about the rest of the book. I know it's a work of fiction, but if the facts with which I am familiar are so far out in left field, why should I think the rest of the book is based on the fact that it purports to be based on the Holocaust? Minnesota people are, to a fault, polite. The book did have a lot of promise and was well written, but the writer has an over-active imagination...or neglected to do even the most basic of research. I could probably write an equally good Holocaust novel, and I'm a baby boomer from Canada!!

There are many reviews above mine to tell you what this book is about. Eloquent, thoughtful. I read several books every week. This is one of the best I have ever read. I would like to recommend it to all. To women especially, may empathize with the powerlessness and struggle to survive in such a repugnant way, to live as a villian because of what you have done to survive and even help others (even though you may do so anonymously). Even heroes can be misinterpreted. I will think of this book with much emotion for a very long time. Read it. You will be glad you did.

I enjoyed the writing in this book, and I do feel that Jenna Blum did a very good job on it. The truth of the holocaust is heavier then even the word Horrible could ever even cover. I think it does well in the truth that though the camps and killings were past horrific, that the German's themselves suffered to survive it.

(SPOILER WARNING)

Now back to what I felt lacked... I TOTALLY fell in love with everything about Max's character. I felt that the scenes between Max and Anna were amazing, heart-filled and beautiful. I cried when he was taken, and cheered when Anna finds herself carrying Trudie. In the whole story the only happiness EVER given to Anna is Max... the rest of her life is just horrific down to her in the "future" being placed in a home. I was saddened that she just left Germany with out looking for Max in the story, did she not even care what happened to him? Just assumed he died? She looked for him in the quarry it said but then never goes on later with the idea that she really cared of his ending.
I wasnt surprised that Max was killed in the end, as I expected that but I would have loved more from his side (even though I know that wasnt the point of the story.)
I really do think it was a nice touch that he was killed by the Obersturmfuhrer. Just goes to show what a monster he was, and in another way that he ruined Anna's Life.
I have to wonder what happened to him other then running away? I know the intent wasn't really to give us insight on them but more on how it effected Anna as a whole.

Anyway I did enjoy the book (as depressing as it was.) but I felt such a strong need for more information on the characters she left behind.

-Maddy :)

I have always been drawn to literature and fiction that takes place or is about WW2 and the Holocaust. I just can't image what it was like for the millions of Jews who suffered under the hand of Hitler and the SS. However, despite this odd attraction, I must really be in the mood to read one of these many books. Last week, when searching the shelves for something new to read, I stumbled upon this book, lost in the back of my book shelf. I really think I bought the book based mainly on my impression of the cover, and then for what the blurb said. It sounded different to me then many of the other books I had read about this time and I was in the mood for something a bit *different.*


This novel starts out by introducing us to both Anna and Trudy at the funeral of Jack - Anna's late husband and Trudy's step father. After only a few pages, we are quickly transported back in time to a young Anna, and her father Gerhard. It is in these few pages that we are introduced to Max, a Jewish Doctor who will forever change Anna's life. The story continues to jump back and forth between past and present, but its not confusing because of the wonderful way the author and publishers have set up the text.


We learn that Trudy knows nothing of her true father, Max - all along thinking she is a product of her mother's love for an SS Officer. As the story continues, Trudy, desperate to find something out about her past, begins a historical documentary project in which she interviews Germans who survived the war and what they went through during this time period. Trudy hopes that by doing so she will learn not only something about her past, but something about her mother, who is tight lipped and refuses to talk about the past. At the same time, through flashbacks, we learn the true story of Anna and Trudy during the years of WW2.
I absolutely adored this book, and think that it will be the top novel of 2008 for me. The one thing that I personally did not enjoy about the novel was the fact that it was written in third person. This took a few minutes to get used to, but once I was the time flew with this novel. I would recommend this to anyone who loves strong, even character development. This novel pulls you into the story and you soon forget where you are. I felt so much for Anna throughout the whole thing, that at times I was close to tears with her struggles. This book is definitely a keeper for me, and I will be passing it on to my mom and friends to read also.

I read ths book along with about 4 co-workers; we had formed a small reading group. This was my pick for the month. We all thought it was a terrific book and had a lot to discuss about it at the end. I'm looking forward to another book by this author.

I usually don't like history stories, this is the exception! This story is so compelling, a real page turner. You will love this, as I did! Can't wait for her second book. Keep up the good work, Jena!

This is a wonderfully written book that gives insight to this horrible era. I couldn't put the book down! I can't recommend this enough. It gives insight to what the Jewish community endured as well as what the "regular" citizens of Germany went through.

This novel seemed to borrow from Schindler's List, the Pianist, and a cheesy Danielle Steele novel I read when I was 14 - all of which were better stories than "Those Who Save Us." There was an unnecessary focus on the perverse SS officer's sexual offenses, which stole focus from the modern interviews of surviviors, which could have offered what the author intended - some explanation as to how the "everyday" German citizen could have watched the Holocaust happen in their own backyard.

Blum is an excellent storyteller - I highly recommend this historical novel chosen by my book group for its fall selection. Each character became lifelike and it was hard to put the book down as I quickly read chapter after chapter. The reader is given the civilian German's look at the Nazi era. If Ms. Blum continues to write novels, I will continue to read them!

This story takes the reader back and forth between Anna, a young German girl surviving WWII, and Trudy, her grown daughter who mistakenly believes her father is an SS officer. The story offers a good dose of tragedy, as one might expect, but it remains hopeful without becoming too soft. Well worth reading and I will gladly recommend it!

If you like Holacaust drama, this is accurate and real enough to draw you in and be taken along on this incredible story

Those Who Save Us

I have read a lot of books about WWII from a Jewish perspective, but never from a German (non-Jewish perspective). There were several things about this book that I really enjoyed. I felt that Blum did a great job developing the characters during both periods; however, I felt like she lacked the ability to connect the characters. This book fals into the "historical fiction" category, so realize that not a lot of detail is accurate.

Overall, I think this was a great read and a good book.

"Those Who Save Us" by Jenna Blum is another of the terrific debut novels I've recently chanced upon. Since I can't do any better than the synopsis on the back cover, I've copied it here as follows:

"For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer. Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the heartbreaking truth of her mother's life."

There are two major and intertwined plots within this novel: Anna's source of shame and silence, that being the pivotal choice she made during the war to keep herself and Trudy alive, and Anna's prickly relationship with Trudy throughout the years. As such, the novel is structured with the past (mostly in Weimar, Germany) and the present (in Minnesota) alternating, though never losing the integrity of its narrative thread and the impact of its previous chapters.

Anna's and Trudy's lives, whether during the war or present, made for a captivating read. Much of that satisfaction is derived from the assured and precise writing that makes the characters very real and their experiences convincing. The urgency of the war, its attendant life-or-death choices, the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the sadness and terror that permeated Anna's life kept me turning the pages, eager to discover what happens next. Trudy's desolation, the result of a fragmented and traumatic early childhood, and the inability to penetrate her mother's wall of silence, is heartrending. Blum puts it so well: "Loneliness isn't corrosive. It is eviscerating." This is a powerful story of two unforgettable women--one strong and courageous who paid a tremendous price for survival, the other conflicted and bewildered, yet determined to find the answers through her interviews of German war survivors. Given its themes it, surprisingly, never lapses into oversentimentality.

The characters are sharply drawn: the pragmatic and brave Frau Mathilde Staudt who risked her life in the Resistance and became Anna's and Trudy's savior; the sadistic Obersturmführer who contaminated Anna's life forever; Anna's first love, Max Stern; Anna's domineering father, Gerhard, sycophantic toward the Reich; and not to forget the courtly Mr. Pfeffer whose war memories are key to the healing of Anna and Trudy. All of them had emotional depth.

I only have one negative thing to say and it is the explicit sex that is described in far too much detail for my liking. I don't think the novel's impact would have been lessened if this had been toned down. Nevertheless, it is a five-star read for I found the story spellbinding and the writing to be profound. No doubt, an impressive debut.

I found the first half of this book to be very interesting and certainly the "page turner" that many others have described. The parts written from Anna's point of view were great and engaging... but I couldn't have cared less about Trudy. There was nothing about that character that made me like her in the least. I thought her a spoiled, arrogant, bratty person. What I really wanted to do was skip all of her parts of the book and read only the parts about Anna.

**spoiler alert**

The big revelation at the end of the book was highly anti-climatic. It was just like all of a sudden the book was finished. I expected a lot more in the reveal, a bigger confrontation or conversation between Anna and Trudy - for Anna to tell her daughter with her own words what happened and how she felt about it all these years later. I felt very let down by the end of this book.

**spoiler end**

I also found the style of prose to be very annoying. Quotation marks are not used to set off characters speaking and it becomes kind of difficult to read in a visual way. Not exactly sure why this was done, but I found it distracting.

A decent read, but don't rush out to buy it.

Thank you to the author for sharing this amazing story. I truly felt the confusion and desperation of the characters (even, in part, the 'bad guys') and how our life choices can haunt us when we view them through our own shadowed lenses.

The book was wonderfully written and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There are so many Holocaust books written but his one had a great viewpoint.

Interesting story we have heard before. Annoyingly written, and really needs editing. Inaccuracies regarding certain facts related to Holocaust.

I thought the experiences of the characters were probably based on some fact. The story depicted to me the right to survive and persist during the most trying time in world history. Judgement of the main character could be harsh if one has never experienced a life threatening situation for themselves or their love ones. The guilt of surviving and how it was accomplished haunts the woman who had to do what she did to protect her loved one. The author kept my interest througout the book and at times I felt deeply for the woman and how she submitted herself to survive.

This novel is one of the best I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Blum provides a sophisticated, compelling plot, realistic and complex characters and relationships, and an interesting perspective. The details are raw, reflecting the horror of life under the Nazis. Even more than a story about the Holocaust, this novel explores the relationship between mothers and daughters, the right to know and the right to privacy, the maternal instinct, love, shame, and forgiveness of self and others. This work was satisfying from beginning to end and left me with much to think about. Although this is one fictional woman's experience, I can't help but think that it reveals truths similar to women who have endured life in war torn countries of past and present.

I look forward to more novels from Jenna Blum.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It is literary yet at the same time a page-turner, and about halfway through the book I began thinking it might quite possibly be a favorite. The plot was engaging, the characters compelling, and the themes incredibly important. I applaud Jenna Blum's courage to approach such a sensitive subject with such an unconventional edge. Every few pages I had to stop reading to think. She is truly not affraid to delve into the "gray" area of the Holocaust instead of leaving it black and white as many would prefer, which I think is important. I also liked her ommitance of quotations, I found that this creative technique served its purpose of keeping the reader engaged in the plot.
With that said, I must say I was dissapointed when everything finally came together in the end. The reader waits and waits for Trudie to find out that her father was not in fact the monster she thinks he was, but rather a Jew that her mother truly loved, and that her mother was not an apathetic German like she fears but rather a young woman with outstanding courage but who was forced to make decisions that are difficult for the average person to even comprehend. From about page 200 on, each time the plot shifted back to present I would get excited, thinking, "she will find something this time." But instead of Trudie finding lead after lead, it all came together for her at once, which was fine, but it all happened in about 5 pages. As I was reading, I thought "Oh know, there are not enough pages left for all of these things I've been waiting for to happen." I wanted to know more about how Trudy felt, I wanted at least something from Anna. In fact, I didn't see anywhere where Mr. Pheffer even told Trudy that her father was a Jew, which I think was important. I also would have liked to see something happen with Trudy and her cameraman. I just felt like the ending was unfair. I understood the significance of the brevity, but I felt like the reader deserved more. I had such a thirst for a great ending and it felt like at the end I was offered a short steady stream before I realized the spicket was turned off.

Those Who Save Us was gripping and page turning. I could not put it down. I love novels that jump between two seperate people telling stories that are intertwined and that is exactly what this book is.

Those who save Us caught me right from the start. World War II fascinates me- esp. the Holocaust and the Nazi regime. This book tells the story of Anna, a young woman who becomes a Nazi officer's mistress to save her daughter. This book made me cry- it made me so angry when people judged her! The novel doesn't have qoutetation marks, which at first set me off, but after reading the book I think it didn't need them. Without qoutetation marks, the story takes on a quaint, sepia feel. Jenna Blum did a wonderful job and I hope she writes something new soon!

"Those Who Save Us" is another in a line of historical fiction that provides American readers the opportunity to feel morally superior to the Germans defeated in the Second World War. In this instance, the observation is about German women and their relations with Nazi officers and the Jewish race.

Jenna Blum beautifully writes about a German woman, who hides and is impregnanted by a Jewish physician. The story is split between this woman caught in Wiemar throughout the war, and the daughter who resulted from her Jewish physician and her modern existence. Needless to say, the physician is found and sent to a nearby concentration camp. Eventually, the German mother prostitutes herself to a high-ranking SS officer for the benefit of her daughter.

For the remainder of the war, she continues in her role. After the war, she moves to America as a war bride and proceeds to punish herself, her American husband, and her daughter for all that she had done. In the meanwhile, her daughter struggles to find an appropriate sense of self due to her mother's vaunted culpability. As an historian, she attempts this by interviewing Germans about their war experiences. In the end, we are informed that the average German took advantage of their Jewish neighbors, acted as prostitutes for the German army, and disowned any moral culpability by means of puerile self-denial.

While I might disagree with the overarching anti-Germanic tone of this novel, I will add that it was generally well-crafted. For the sake of classroom discussion, it might find itself read against the backdrop of a reasonable historiography of what the life of an average German was really like during the war.

I bought this book on a whim so I could have enough to qualify for free shipping with another book order. I am glad I did. I was moved by the story of a German woman and her daughter and their struggle to survive during the war, living in a bakery situated near Buchenwald. I liked how the author wove the tale of their past with their present day life in America, and that it was told from the German perspective. I think this story was meant to convey the idea that one of the main characters, Anna, was not an enabler of Nazi war crimes, nor was she unsympathetic to the plight of the Jewish (as she did all she could to help them), but her main concern was her daughter's survival, and was willing to do anything to ensure it, even though she had to live with the guilt of it later in her life. It was a guilt was so overwhelming that she refused to speak about it after the war. I found it interesting that the author called her silence an inviolable right, even though her daughter had a similar right to know the truth. It took me about halfway through the book to realize what the title meant, but some may realize sooner. There is one incredulous moment near the end of the book, where the other main character Trudie *spoiler alert* comes to find out about her true lineage. It just seemed too convenient, but aside from that I thoroughly loved this book and would read it again as well as recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading about WWII or the Holocaust. There are several extremely sad accounts of atrocities committed by Nazis that sounded like they could have been inspired by true events. This is definitely a page turner IMO.

A truly great read and an amazing story. This is one of those books that I have to pass on anybody who likes to read and I know they will love it.

This page turner tells the story of a beautiful German young woman caught between her love of an older Jewish doctor, her futile attemps to hide him, the birth of their daughter and the indignities and pain she must suffer at the hands of an SS officer to ensure the girl's survival. Then the tale jumps to the pleasureless life of her daughter whose only clue to her mother's past leads her to believe that the SS officer was her father, and that her mother colluded with the nazis for personal comfort. It is her search into her mother's past which leads her on a mission of self discovery and history. I could not put this down. My only complaint is that at no time does the author satisfactorily explain why the mother kept her heroism a secret even from her American husband and her daughter. The explanation that the past is in the past... doesn't fill in the blanks. Nor does the notion of survivor's guilt. The woman suffered from the derision of the townfolk in her American home because she was German. Had she merely explained her history she would not have been so alone in life. However, I usually love any fairly well written holocaust literature, and I loved this book as well.

I finished the novel yesterday afternoon, and woke up thinking, wondering about the characters. That is a sign of a good book-characters that stick with you. Those Who Save Us is one of those novels that has so many layers that it is hard to decide where to start talking about it. Ultimately, it is a novel about survival and what one will do to survive. Reading about Anna and the choices she made during the war provided me with a fresh and interesting point of view, and one that I hadn't thought much about before-what did the German women do in the midst of the terror that was plaguing their country? Well-written and thought provoking, Those Who Save Us is a must read.

I enjoyed this novel quite a bit. It's the story of a German mother's survival with her young daughter in Nazi Germany. That's a good story, even if a little bit manipulative. The novel moves back and forth in time, from Germany in the 1940's to modern times in America, where the mother and child are 50 years older, and struggling to understand or shut out the past. In is the story of these women in the present which is the best told and most fascinating. Of course, the reader needs the stories from both eras to make sense of things. While not a great work of fiction, Those Who Save Us is quite good.

Creatively written, I enjoyed the way she took us from past to present and then merged the two. I agree with the other reviewers, it's not often you see a book that makes your realize what some Germans might have gone through to save themselves as well as save Jewish neighbors and friends. recommended !

I just finished this wonderful book, and can't add much to what other favorable reviews have said. I loved it. I was touched by the characters. The mother-daughter relationship is beautifully and realistically rendered. The horrors of life in Nazi Germany were so painful that I had to stop reading at times. The ending offered some hope for healing while at the same time recognizing the near imposibility of changing what the past has wrought. Definitely in my top 20 of all time.

My name is Wendy Abell Grodnitzky. My late mother's family, The Potash's were from Poland. She had 3 brothers and 1 sister born there. Many years ago we had my aunt record her daily memories of life growing up, with fear instilled in her all the time. I could not appreciate her feelings at that time, but I have started reading many many books and what I have learned has made me understand why my late aunts and uncles had the personalities that they had. What I had learned was that the past memories can never be erased, just put aside. Your book was fabulous!!!! I could not put it down, and I am passing it around for all of my love ones to read. You are a wonderful author and I look forward to reading many more books that you have contributed to. I always like to give a little something to my family after the Passover Seder, this year it will be your book. Thank you , Thank you , Thank you , for the enlightment.
Sincerely,
Wendy Abell Grodnitzky

I am surprised by the wave of gushing adulation for this shallow and exploitive novel. Thank goodness for the one reviewer who described it as "manipulative", and by the time I had read as far as the saccharine ending I was ready to throw it across the room! Come on folks - go read Inga Clendinnen's "Reading the Holocaust".

I bawled like a baby at the end. Every single page held my attention and touched my heart.

I enjoyed this book although I would not call it great. I think the characters could have been better developed and at times seemed one dimensional. The plot was interesting and engaging and the history and horrors of the Holocaust were shocking and deplorable as one would expect. I am not sorry I read it but I did not love it either.

My mother called & told me that I MUST read this book. I bought it and loved it. Now I've convinced my book club to read it.

Author Jenna Blum should have won the Pulitzer Prize for this book. The Minnesota winter details felt real. The family details felt real. The parts in Germany felt (all too) reall. The university professor's life felt real, her feelings about her mother, her past, her questions...real. The mother-daughter struggles, made even more complicated by the complicated past from the war years...real. Powerful. Strong. Despite its nearly 500 pages, I read it in just six days, and thought about it during the day, anxious to get back to my reading at night. Best book I've read in five years or more. I'll never forget it. Highly recommended.

This book was one of the most absorbing books I've read lately, and I read a lot of books. Once I started reading I couldn't put it down. Right now I am into everything related to WW2 and this definitely showed that time in a different light than I had seen before.

I enjoyed this book. It's well written with clearly defined characters and a plot which is both plausible historically and well-researched insofar as I can determine.

The author is an American of mixed Jewish/German ancestry and she addresses an important period of world history in a way most American readers can follow. There were a couple of glitches, however.

The author handles dialogue well where content is concerned, but she doesn't use quotation marks. I found that a bit disconcerting, but I am admittedly Paleolithic in my outlook. Younger readers probably take such things in stride.

The author also makes a couple of minor errors. One of her main characters is an SS officer with the rank of Obersturmfuhrer (roughly comparable to a First Lieutenant in the US Army) who habitually carries a sidearm.

He sometimes uses this sidearm in ways which appear to me to be fiendishly abusive. However, the author describes it both as a "Luger" and a "revolver." Even if she is teaching in Boston, this gun can't be both a Luger and a revolver. A Luger is a 9 MM semi-automatic pistol and anybody who's even seen a picture of one would NEVER confuse it with a revolver. In one critical scene, the author even has the Obersturmfuhrer trying to manipulate the safety on his revolver with one hand. Most revolvers don't have safeties. Luger pistols, however, do and that's probably what an SS officer would have carried. The safety, however, is easily manipulated with one hand which fact would spoil an otherwise dramatic scene.

Other than these minor glitches, I was very pleased with this novel and enjoyed reading it. Jenna Blum may not be much of a shooter, but she is a wonderful writer and I gave her novel five stars.

I won't bore you with more discussion of the plot. That's been done here by others. Only want to add my opinion that this was one of the best books I've every read, which is saying alot from a voracious reader.

This book was indeed a greatly written book. The characters were incredible, full of depth and character. I loved every page of it. I was only disappointed that it ended. I look forward to more work from Jenna Blum.

As the mother of two grown women, I could not help but sadly shake my head over the relationship of the mother and daughter in this book. Both of them lost so much to silence. Of course, it was a moving story of World War II and the Holocaust, but it was also a human story of just two people, one of whom would not let the other know her. The ending was gratifying, for each of these women deserved better than what she had gotten from life. Now I want my daughters to read it. I am looking forward to more from Jenna Blum.

The only problem I have after finishing this novel is what to read next! I seriously had post-book-partum after finishing it. This book will haunt you and challenge you in a serious way, making you wonder what lengths would I have gone to, to survive? Yet it is a real barn-burning page-turner, as other reviewers have said. Strongest recommendation for book clubs and gifts.

The only problem I have after finishing this novel is what to read next! I seriously had post-book-partum after finishing it. This book will haunt you and challenge you in a serious way, making you wonder what lengths would I have gone to, to survive? Yet it is a real barn-burning page-turner, as other reviewers have said. Strongest recommendation for book clubs and gifts.

I was disappointed in this book. The dialogue was stilted, the plot relied to heavily on coincidence, the pacing was off, and characters were too unidimentional. Great idea, though. I believe this is a first novel; perhaps subsequent efforts will be better.

This book is fantastic! The story of a German woman during WWII doing all she must to keep herself and her daughter alive, and her daughter as an adult searching for answers to the past. It takes another look at the question "How could the German citizens let that happen to their neighbors?" You'll have to read it to understand, but suffice to say that the answer is deeply complex. The book's position is that even the regular German people were oppressed and subject to the whims and cruelty of the Nazi party - falling just short of the systematic destruction of their race.

Not for the faint of heart!! While there are thankfully few, several scenes are so brutal they left me shocked and horrified for days. It certainly doesn't gloss over anything.

Fascinating perspective not usually seen in Holocaust-era books. It left me wanting to read more about this era.

I could not put this book down, and I'm buying it for all my friends for the holidays. The last time I loved a book this much was Gone With The Wind, which I read in highschool! (And that was many years ago.) Anna and Trudy and their terrible situations haunt me and have taught me something about war, survival and dignity. Do yourself a favor and read this book; do others a favor and pass it on.

When our book group reviewed this novel, we were deeply divided. I really did not like the book, actually disliked it. I didn't like any of the characters. I liked the daughter least. It took me a long time to get through it. I did not think I learned anything important or new about this period of time from anyone's point of view, and while the themes covered are critically important, there are other novels of this period that do so more effecively for me. This was just bleak and felt manipulative.

In spite of my title, I loved reading this book. I was so entertained I lost a day of work! I finished it yesterday and cannot stop thinking about it. However I am frustrated by how Anna and Trudy responded when key points in the book were revealed. Example: Why doesn't Trudy think more about who her real father is when she learns she is indeed not spawned from the evil "O"? She is instead the daughter of Herr Doktor and shouldn't she be so completely overcome with curiosity? Wouldn't she be trying to get more info from her mother? This really bugged me! Why didn't she talk more about the bakery and her "aunt" with the last interviewee? It wasn't natural to me.

Also, I understand Anna had a traumatic life and felt she didn't deserve to discuss it in order to punish herself for some of the choices she made during the war (like being the mistress of a nazi soldier), but I just wanted to shake her and make her talk. Why didn't she reassure the very screwed-up Trudy that she is the daughter of a good man that she loved?

Is there anyone out there that can explain this to me?

Jenna Blum has written a powerful, sometimes piercing portrayal of someone who I suspect could be herself and her relationship with her own mother..yet it is a novel so the story does not need to be verified... the book was definitely worth reading.