The Daughter's Tale
-
- 59,00 kr
-
- 59,00 kr
Publisher Description
For readers whose hearts were broken by The Tattooist of Auschwitz
'Correa’s prose is atmospheric, but what’s most fascinating about this novel is his portrayal of terrified yet strong female characters' New York Times
New York City, 2015: Eighty-year-old Elise Duval is a French Catholic who arrived in New York after the Second World War. When a woman from Cuba visits with letters written in German to Elise from her mother during the war, her world is forever changed as she remembers a time and country she'd long since forgotten and seven decades of secret unravel.
Berlin, 1939: Bookstore owner and recent widow Amanda Sternberg is fleeing Nazi Germany with her two young daughters. She heads towards unoccupied France, but with such a hard fight for freedom, a peaceful life of safety is hard to find.
Based on true events, The Daughter’s Tale chronicles one of the most harrowing atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis during the Second World War: the 1944 massacre of all the inhabitants of a small, idyllic village in the south of France. Heartbreaking and immersive, The Daughter's Tale is a beautifully crafted family saga of love, survival, and hope against all odds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Impossible choices faced by loving parents lie at the heart of this underwhelming tale by Correa (The German Girl). The story opens in New York City in 2015, when the elderly Elise Duval receives a phone call from a strange woman who had recently been in Cuba and found some letters that belong to Elise. The narrative then jumps back to Berlin, starting in 1933 and continuing through 1947 in France. After Julius Sternberg, a Jewish doctor, dies in a prison camp, his wife Amanda carries out his wishes that the rest of the family leave Germany. The plan is for their two daughters, four-year-old Lina and five-year-old Viera, to live in Cuba with an uncle. Unable to secure the necessary travel documents to accompany them, Amanda will go to an old friend, Claire Duval, in France until it's safe to bring the girls back. At the last minute, Amanda decides Lina is too young to go and sends Viera alone. Amanda and Lina's new life in Haute-Vienne with Claire and her daughter, Danielle, turns dangerous when WWII erupts and the Germans arrive in France. Lina and Danielle hide out in an abbey, but in 1944, the Germans come looking for weapons and one of their missing soldiers. While Correa convincingly evokes the perils of occupied France, his characters rarely move beyond being one-dimensional, and the hasty conclusion about how the war ended for Viera and Lina is unsatisfying. Readers interested in WWII fiction have plenty of better options elsewhere.
