The Twins on the Train: An unforgettable and utterly heartbreaking World War Two novel by Suzanne Goldring

 

 

As the smell of smoke drifts through the air, Jewish people lock their doors. They no longer feel welcome in their home city, and while some mothers hide their children, others take them, clad in dark threadbare coats, to the crowded train station and the hope of a new life.

Rosa has feared for her twins since they were born two weeks ago. As she huddles in her filthy house, crammed in with her neighbours, she sees children growing weaker. It may be too late for her and her seven-year-old daughter Therese. But can she find a way out for her precious babies?

Dora scans the desperate crowd on the platform, despairing as she knows there isn’t room for all of them on the train to England. And when a woman thrusts a basket containing newborn twins into her arms, a shiver of dread slides down her spine. Babies aren’t authorised to travel – how can she keep them hidden from the cold-eyed soldiers?

She knows this mother wants the same thing she does – safety for these innocent children. But will she be able to help this brave woman before it is too late?

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About The Author

Following an eventful career as a public relations consultant, specialising in business and travel, Suzanne Goldring turned to writing the kind of novels she likes to read, about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. Her debut novel MY NAME IS EVA draws on her experience of volunteering in a care home and was partially inspired by a cache of wartime love letters which were saved from the flames. Her second novel, BURNING ISLAND, is set in Corfu, a place of fun and beauty but also tremendous tragedy.

Suzanne writes in her thatched cottage in Hampshire and a seaside cottage in Cornwall.

 

My Review

This story starts and ends with the twins, from present time to back in 1939, a terrible time for certain people back in Germany.
We meet and get to know the Quakers who risked everything to bring the kindertransports to fruition, before England became involved in the WWII. So many youngsters were rescued, but the story really focuses on three. These volunteers risked everything, and the author has us often with our hearts in our throats as the danger comes upon the train, and then in the hotel.
What a terrible time and blight on history when the evil spread across Europe, but this is also a story about lives that are saved, and how the train traveled through Germany to Holland, and the by ship to England.
Be sure to read the epilogue, the the author does a great job of finishing this story with some answers.
I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Bookoutour, and was not required to give a positive review.