Based on the true story of the Nazi massacre of a French village in 1944, an unforgettable tale of love and redemption from the bestselling author of The German Girl. Berlin, 1939: Bookstore owner and recent widow Amanda Sternberg is fleeing Nazi Germany with her two young daughters, heading towards unoccupied France. She arrives in Haute-Vienne with only one of her girls. Their freedom is … her girls. Their freedom is short-lived and soon they are taken to a labour camp.
New York City, 2015: Elise Duval, eighty years old, receives a phone call from a woman recently arrived from Cuba bearing messages from a time and country that she’s long forgotten. A French Catholic who arrived in New York after World War II, Elise and her world are forever changed when the woman arrives with letters written to Elise from her mother in German during the war, unravelling more than seven decades of secrets.
Inspired by one of the most shocking atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, the 1944 massacre of all the inhabitants of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in the south of France, The Daughter’s Tale is a beautifully crafted family saga of love, survival and hope against all odds.
‘Breathtakingly threaded together from start to finish with the sound of a beating heart.’ THE NEW YORK TIMES
‘Not many novels bring me to tears… it takes a special storyteller to tell the tale of such devastation. It seems so wrong to say I loved this book, but I did. I loved, I learned, I cried.’ Natasha Lester
‘Reminds us that it is in the darkest gardens that the brightest seeds of hope are sown’ Kristin Harmel, bestselling author of The Room on Rue Amelie
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4.5 for me ; but will round up to 5.
The Daughter’s Tale is a powerful, haunting novel of World War 2 that will stay with you long after the book is closed.
The struggle for survival for Amanda and her two daughters and the sacrifices she must make to try and keep them from harm’s way is compelling. You will cry with Amanda, you will cheer her on.
One of the biggest if not biggest travesty of World War 2 is a part of the story when the Nazi’s kill an entire town in the South of France.
This is not just the story of Amanda and her daughters, but it is the story of those around them that helped and were a part of this harrowing journey.
The secrets come to light in 2015 when Elise receives a phone call and some letters from her Mom , all those years ago.
I loved The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa and this book is even more powerful
I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher Simon & Schuster Canada for the wonderful opportunity to read The Daughter’s Tale.
I won The Daughter’s Tale in a giveaway. This is one of those books that will stick with you for quite a while after reading it, thanks to the author using real tragedies from WWII. I always hesitate to read historical fiction about WWII as I know even if they’re technically fiction, I can’t tell myself “don’t worry, it’s not real” because even if the authors don’t use real events, the horrors they speak of did happen somewhere. At the end of this book, the author has written a note explaining when and where a couple of those horrors used happened. The main character in this book is an octogenarian who has managed to block out her past until it comes back to haunt her in the form of 70 year old letters written by her mother. She then is forced to relive the many horrors she faced as a young girl. Horrors that tore her innocence and childhood away far too early. The author has made the characters so real and sympathetic that you immediately connect and relate to them. I’ll be honest, it’s a difficult read and you will need to keep a box of tissues with you… but I appreciate the importance of never forgetting the past so we can try not to repeat it. WWII was full of horrors so awful we can’t even begin to concoct them in our worst nightmares. It was senseless and inhumane. But this book is filled with characters that remind us that even in the darkest moments of our history there remains light in the form of human kindness. There are always those still willing to help others even when it seems like the rest of the human race has given up. Beautifully written and definitely worth the tears!