Book Review: Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

I'm not a big fan of reading via electronic devices, but I have significant down time at my job and am not allowed to have a regular book at my desk during work hours. One day, I was perusing Amazon, just goofing off, when I stumbled upon a cool perk that comes with Amazon Prime: Prime Reading!

Prime Reading is a cool bonus perk that comes with an Amazon Prime membership, allowing you free (outside of your Prime membership fees) online access to books, magazines, and other reading material. Most (maybe all?) are compatible with Amazon Kindle, although Prime Reading is NOT part of the Kindle Unlimited program. 

I've read a few books online through Prime Reading, and most recently finished Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum. Those Who Save Us is a fictional novel shifting between the modern, Midwestern United States and Nazi Germany. It also shifts between a mother and daughter's stories. 

Anna, the mother in this novel, is a young woman in Nazi Germany, living under the roof of her brutish, Nazi-sympathizer father. She begins an affair with a Jewish doctor whom she hides in her home -- practically right under her father's nose -- and by whom she becomes pregnant. Ultimately, Anna ends up seeking refuge for herself and her baby girl with a female baker who turns out to be baking bread for the Nazis while also smuggling messages out of concentration camps and work crews for the Jews. Eventually, Anna is pulled into an affair with a high ranking, but brutal Nazi officer -- an affair she continues in order to protect her child from starvation and other horrors of Nazi Germany. 

In the modern, Midwestern United States, Anna's daughter, Trudy, has many questions about her father and her mother's life before they found their way to the USA. Trudy knows nothing of the true identity of her father and knows very little about her own mother, even after moving her mother into a senior citizen's home and then into Trudy's own home. Together, the two lead quite separate and quiet existences under the same roof, even after Anna discovers and is upset by the nature of Trudy's research project as a college professor, interviewing former Nazi sympathizers (and the occasional Nazi victim). 

Ultimately, through Trudy's interviews, she learns to understand and appreciate her mother, even as her mother refuses to confirm the truth about Trudy's childhood and parentage.

Overall, Those Who Save Us is a poignant, well paced novel that is worth reading. It is both contemporary and historical fiction. I highly recommend it! 

What are you reading and enjoying right now?

If you want to try Prime Reading, you'll need an Amazon Prime membership -- get a free 30-day Prime trial HERE.