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| Simon & Schuster November 2018 My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book. |
Germany, 1945. Klara Janowska and her daughter Alicja have walked for weeks to get to Graufeld Displaced Persons camp. In the cramped, dirty, dangerous conditions they, along with 3,200 others, are the lucky ones. They have survived and will do anything to find a way back home.
But when Klara recognises a man in the camp from her past, a deadly game of cat and mouse begins. He knows exactly what she did during the war to save her daughter. She knows his real identity. What will be the price of silence? And will either make it out of the camp alive?
My thoughts about it..
Klara Janowska has so many secrets, they threaten to overwhelm her and yet, throughout all the heartache of her life, her priority has always been her daughter, Alicja, whose well being is beyond anything that Klara would endure for her safety.
The Graufeld Displaced Persons camp is marginally better that what Klara has left behind in Germany, and with bitter memories of her treatment at the hands of men who used and abused her, Klara's psychological scars run deep. When Klara discovers that a man from her past is now a resident at the camp, she is determined to protect both herself and her daughter from him, regardless of the cost, to both her safety and sanity. However, for Klara and Alicja to succeed in this dreadful post-WW2 world, they need to learn how to survive.
The author writes well and always gives such a realistic historical view of the world that she creates so beautifully.I raced through this book with my heart in my mouth, never quite knowing what was going to happen next to Klara and her daughter. Both the bleakness of the internment camp and the constant sense of danger comes across so well that it makes for difficult and emotional reading. I particularly enjoyed reading the hints at Klara's back story which made sense of her erratic behaviour, whilst at the same time it gave some fascinating historical background into this very dark period in world history.
The Survivors is an atmospheric and tension packed novel which shows the absolute strength of survival, and of the overwhelming power of a mother's love when the need to protect her child from danger is all consuming.
Kate Furnivall is the author of eleven novels, including the international bestsellers, The Russian Concubine, The Liberation and The Betrayal. She lives in Devon.
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