The Curator's Daughter
A Sweeping WWII Dual-Timeline Novel of Hope and Courage in the Face of Evil
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A young girl, kidnapped on the eve of World War II, changes the lives of a German archaeologist forced into the Nazi Party and—decades later—a researcher trying to overcome her own trauma.
1940. Hanna Tillich cherishes her work as an archaeologist for the Third Reich, searching for the Holy Grail and other artifacts to bolster evidence of a master Aryan race. But when she is reassigned to work as a museum curator in Nuremberg, then forced to marry an SS officer and adopt a young girl, Hanna begins to see behind the Nazi facade. A prayer labyrinth becomes a storehouse for Hanna's secrets, but as she comes to love Lilly as her own daughter, she fears that what she's hiding—and what she begins to uncover—could put them both in mortal danger.
Eighty years later, Ember Ellis is a Holocaust researcher intent on confronting hatred toward the Jewish people and other minorities. She reconnects with a former teacher on Martha's Vineyard after she learns that Mrs. Kiehl's mother once worked with the Nazi Ahnenerbe. And yet, Mrs. Kiehl describes her mother as "a friend to the Jewish people." Wondering how both could be true, Ember helps Mrs. Kiehl regain her fractured childhood memories of World War II while at the same time confronting the heartache of her own secret past—and the person who wants to silence Ember forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young girl kidnapped by Nazis piques the interest of a present-day researcher in this propulsive time-swapping tale from Dobson (Catching the Wind). During WWII, Lilly Strauss Kiehl is taken from her parents in Poland at age 8, receives Aryan indoctrination in an orphanage, and is adopted by an SS agent and his wife, Hanna Tillich. But an American serviceman who had an affair with Hanna before the war comes to find his former lover as the war is ending, believes Lilly to be his biological child, rescues her, and brings her back to the U.S. In 1999, Lilly, now a retired teacher, reconnects with Ember Ellis, a former student. Ember, a history doctoral student, suffers nightmares from trauma endured in a religious cult that idolized the Nazis. Lilly's wartime recollections and other stories Ember finds of those who risked their lives to protect victims of Nazi persecution become the core of Ember's dissertation. As Ember works to piece together Lilly's spotty memories, Hanna's story emerges: she was a Nazi researcher tasked with finding historical proof of Aryan superiority. Ember makes for a believable, complicated heroine whose research into of Hanna's competing desires to help the Nazi war effort and be a loving caretaker to Lilly allow her to overcome anger over her own upbringing. Though faith elements are secondary, fans of WWII inspirationals will love this.
