💐 Lilac Girls 💐 (2016) - Book Review

MY REVIEW

Series: Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls Book #1)
Hardcover: 496 pages

Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (April 5, 2016)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1101883073

ISBN-13: 978-1101883075

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“New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.

An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.

For the ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. Once hired, though, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.

The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland—as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.”


It is hard to rate a book such as this given the subject material as well as personal preferences. This is one such book.

After hearing about the author’s newest release “Lost Roses”, I was interested in the premise of it as it is more of a pre-quel to this novel. And, wanting to read them in chronological order, I decided to get this one first.

“Lilac Girls”, a fictional World War II era story, is Martha Hall Kelly’s first novel. This story is based on actual people and events – particularly Caroline Ferriday and Herta Oberheuser’s involvement with the Ravensbrück Rabbits. The story takes place from September 1939 to 1959.

Don’t let the beautiful cover fool you – this is anything but a “beautiful” story, at least for me it wasn’t. It is a story of tragedy, and while marketed as a tale of redemption – I didn’t find it. I found it to be gut-wrenching and dismal. There were some moments of positivity, such as the rescue and the reparation attempts, but given the subject – it was not a feel good read. I don’t know if that was the author’s intention or not.

The key players and alternating points of view (POV), told over three “parts”:

✨ Caroline Ferriday, a volunteer and socialite

✨ Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish girl

✨ Herta Oberheuser, a German doctor at Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women

Other characters in this book are also real life figures: Dorothea Binz and Irma Grese, two of the wardresses of Ravensbrück. Other famous Nazi names are dropped as well.

The atrocities committed against the characters, is not fiction at all. The author kept the characters names of Ferriday, Oberheuser, Binz, and Grese – along with other Nazi figures, but created the sisters Kasia and Zuzanna for the story.

The book is long read, the hard cover version is 476 pages for the story. There are some parts that are stretched out, and some that have a brushing glance.

Ferriday was (in this book and real life), a former actress, as well as a humanitarian. In September 1939, her life changes as Hitler invades France. She is a volunteer at the French Embassy in New York and in charge of providing relief to French orphans.

In the book, Ferriday also has a romance with a married French actor, who is then arrested and imprisoned in Nazi controlled France. The writer gave the fictional Ferriday the romance to connect her to France. It really wasn’t needed. The real Ferriday was connected through her work, and her work is a part of history. I wonder if Ferriday was anything like the writer portrayed in this book as I didn’t find her character interesting.

Kasia (the fictional inmate, at Ravensbrück) is a 17 year old in war torn Poland. She, her sister, and mother are arrested and taken to Ravensbrück. There Herta Oberhauser performs medical experiments on the women to simulate battle wounds and the effectiveness of sulfanilamides – these were real tests conducted by Oberhauser at Ravensbrück. Due to these experiments the “ladies” were referred to as rabbits for the reason that they “hopped” around the camp after the surgeries and were used as experimental rabbits.

The first part covers from September 1939-April 1945, and at 291 pages is the longest part of the book. It ends with Herta’s capture by the allies.

Part two covers from April 1945 to 1947 when the war is over and Kasia along with her sister have been liberated, briefly touching on Herta’s war crimes trial. She, unlike the others who were executed, was sentenced to 20 years. One chapter is devoted to her (pages 356-360). The fates of Binz and Grese are not exactly told either, more particularly Binz as she was quite prominent in the book during the Ravensbrück chapters, and given her real life fate.

As the book heads to the end with now mostly Kasia as the narrator, and occasionally Caroline; Herta is not “heard from” again from chapters 34 to 47 (pages 356 to 466). Herta is then only heard from Kasia’s interactions with her, and this is because Caroline asks Kasia to travel and identify the woman. Herta is now a family practice doctor in West Germany after serving only five (5) years of her sentence.

While Kasia seems to dislike what is happening in Poland, under Communist rule, she makes no effort to try to leave her life unlike her sister. Zuzanna; despite everything that has happened; finds peace with her new life in the U.S, gets married, and even adopts a child (as she was sterilized at Ravensbrück).

I didn’t expect to find Herta as relatable or sympathetic at all, which I think is understandable give who she was and what she did.

My thoughts of Kasia were all over the place. To be blunt, I couldn’t stand her. How, after what she’d been through, could she be told quite simply to “get it over it” by those around her, even her own sister was beyond me. The atrocities that were done to her (and others) are nothing to get over like you would a bad haircut. That I understood; and sympathized with quite deeply.

Yet there were survivors who went through the same things she did and were not as bitter as she was – even her sister who had been sterilized. Kasia seemed intent on remaining bitter, even to the point of taking it out on her daughter that she named after her mother. It was as if Kasia, who was able to marry her childhood sweetheart after what had happened, could find NOTHING to be grateful for – not even her husband or daughter.

I believe the author tried to weave a fantastic story about what occurred. I think it would’ve been better to either create an entire fictional story around the events or write it as a “documentary”. The mix of real life characters with fictional ones didn’t work for me at all, especially the introduction of a fictional romance with a real life character.

A lot of the FOREIGN language used; French, German, etc; left me either confused or grabbing my phone and using Google. It would have been helpful if the author had placed a dictionary reference in the front or back of the book. Some things were translated, but not all.

The author did, in her notes, expand on what happened to Herta Oberhauser. She had been released in 1952 quietly by the Americans to curry favor with Germany. She was recognized by Ravensbrück survivor and her practice was shut down. She fought back with her letters, but Caroline fought back as well. Oberhauser was fined as punishment. She died in January 1978 at the age of 66.

Upon my research I found that Dorothea Binz fled Ravensbrück during the death march, was captured May 3,1945 by the British in Hamburg. She was tried with SS personnel by a British court at the Ravensbrück War Crimes Trials. She was convicted, sentenced to death, and subsequently hanged (by long-drop method) on the gallows at Hamelin prison on May 2, 1947 at the age of 27.

Irma Grese was convicted for crimes involving the ill-treatment and murder of prisoners committed at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. She was sentenced to death at the Belsen trial. Executed at 22 years of age, Grese was the youngest woman to die judicially under British law in the 20th century.

This one book that you either love or hate – it was, for me, a good one-time read. I’m glad my local library had it. I will be happy to return it so someone else can read it.

2 ⭐⭐/5⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Martha Hall Kelly is a native New Englander and lives in Litchfield County Connecticut. She has earned journalism degrees from Syracuse and Northwestern Universities, worked as an advertising copywriter for many years and raised three wonderful children, who are now mostly out of the nest. Her novel Lilac Girls is Martha’s first novel

Other Book(s) in the series: 

Series: Lost Roses (Lilac Girls Book #2' Prequel)
Hardcover: 448 pages

Publisher: Ballantine Books (April 9, 2019)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1524796379

ISBN-13: 978-1524796372

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“It is 1914, and the world has been on the brink of war so often, many New Yorkers treat the subject with only passing interest. Eliza Ferriday is thrilled to be traveling to St. Petersburg with Sofya Streshnayva, a cousin of the Romanovs. The two met years ago one summer in Paris and became close confidantes. Now Eliza embarks on the trip of a lifetime, home with Sofya to see the splendors of Russia: the church with the interior covered in jeweled mosaics, the Rembrandts at the tsar’s Winter Palace, the famous ballet.

But when Austria declares war on Serbia and Russia’s imperial dynasty begins to fall, Eliza escapes back to America, while Sofya and her family flee to their country estate. In need of domestic help, they hire the local fortune-teller’s daughter, Varinka, unknowingly bringing intense danger into their household.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Eliza is doing her part to help the White Russian families find safety as they escape the revolution. But when Sofya’s letters suddenly stop coming, she fears the worst for her best friend.

From the turbulent streets of St. Petersburg and aristocratic countryside estates to the avenues of Paris where a society of fallen Russian émigrés live to the mansions of Long Island, the lives of Eliza, Sofya, and Varinka will intersect in profound ways. In her newest powerful tale told through female-driven perspectives, Martha Hall Kelly celebrates the unbreakable bonds of women’s friendship, especially during the darkest days of history.”

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