The Pianist's Wife

Not Fully German. Not Fully Jewish. Not Fully Straight. How Will They Survive The Holocaust? Yet again Soraya Lane returns to historical fiction during WWII with yet another aspect you've never likely considered. Before the rise of Hitler, before the collapse of Germany due to the Versailles excesses, it was possible - if perhaps frowned upon in at least some circles - for a German to marry a Jew and have kids with them. What happens *after* the rise of Hitler and Nazism to those children?

We know from the history books that homosexuals were sent to some of the same concentration -and extermination - camps Jews were during the "Final Solution". But have *you* ever read a fictionalized version of what their lives could have been like? What if I told you that one particularly harrowing incident - you'll know it when you see it here - was taken straight from Lane's actual research and that that particular scene was only barely fictionalized at all?

Lane, as usual, manages to build a metric shit-ton of research into making her historical fiction as real and as tense as possible, without making it ever seem like an info-dump in any way. These people, though completely fictional, are going to *feel* like people you will think you could have known during this period. (Which gets weird if you, like me, are the grandchild of two American soldiers of this period, both of whom survived the Battle of the Bulge during the period of the story in this book, one of whom got a few fairly high ranking medals for his actions in that particular battle.)

For those that could ever doubt just how horrible the Third Reich was - and yet, just how *normal* at least some people who lived under it were - Lane is here to show you in stark imagery just how wrong you truly are. And yet she's never going to preach to you at all - she's simply going to tell her story her way and highlight several different very real incidents along the way. Incidents you may not have heard about, no matter how much you study that period yourself.

Very much recommended.