The Curator's Daughter by Melanie Dobson

 

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.

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About The Author

 

Writing fiction is a fun excuse for Melanie to explore ghost towns and old houses, travel to unusual places, and spend hours reading dusty books and journals. She writes both contemporary and historical fiction with threads of romance and suspense.

Melanie is the award-winning author of almost twenty time-slip, historical romance, suspense, and contemporary novels including Catching the Wind, The Curator's Daughter, and The Silent Order. Four of her novels including Chateau of Secrets have won Carol Awards, Catching the Wind won the Audie 2018 Inspirational Fiction award, and Love Finds You in Liberty, Indiana won Best Novel of Indiana. Catching the Wind and Memories of Glass were both finalists for Christy Awards in historical fiction.

Melanie and her husband, Jon, have two daughters. After moving numerous times with Jon's work, the Dobsons have finally settled near Portland, Oregon, and they love to travel and hike in both the mountains and the cliffs above the Pacific. When Melanie isn't writing or researching, she enjoys line dancing, biking, and making up stories with her kids.

More information about her and her books is available on her website at www.melaniedobson.com. You can also connect with Melanie at www.facebook.com/melaniedobsonfiction.

 

My Review

 
This read quickly became a riveting page turner, as we live in the time of great evil in Europe, to the present day life in America

Hanna Tillich rather naively works for the Third Reich as an archeologist, and she loved her job and felt she was helping her country.

The evil government has other ideas and she is soon married to someone she didn't want to marry, and a mother to a young adopted child, but throughout all that is playing out around her, we see she does her best to help to tell the story of what is really happening here.

We also meet Ember Ellis, current day, whose life has now become entwined with Hanna's, in a way that you will never see coming, or expect to hear about in the USA!

What a wonderful job Melanie Dobson has done with this story, and we need to never forget what happened here, the hate of a religion so deep that they stop at nothing, and remember those that selflessly gave what they could to thwart!

I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Tyndale, and was not required to give a positive review.