Diane Armstrong’s bestselling fictional debut A mother’s silence, a village with a terrible secret, and an Australian woman who travels to Poland to uncover the truth … When forensic dentist Halina Shore arrives in Nowa Kalwaria to take part in a war crimes investigation, she finds herself at the centre of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. What she does … not realise is that she has also embarked on a confronting personal journey. Inspired by a true incident that took place in Poland in 1941, Diane Armstrong’s powerful novel is part mystery, part forensic investigation, and a moving and confronting story of love, loss and sacrifice. ‘A deeply moving and inspiring novel’ GOOD READING ‘A bold adventure of a novel … Here is a consummate writer at the top of her form. A fine fictional debut from a writer who’s already made her mark’ CANBERRA tIMES ‘Profoundly moving, compelling and superbly written’ AUStRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY
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This book is valuable to all but the extremely well-informed. Using a regrettably far-fetched fictional device, it accurately conveys the nightmarish episode of the slaughter of the Polish town of Jedwabne’s Jews BY THEIR CATHOLIC POLISH NEIGHBORS some two years after the Nazi occupation. Morality is elusive here: the Polish murderers’ “grievances” deserve examination. There are also saints among the Poles who saved a remnant of the Jewish community at the risk of their own lives. People will do awful things if they just keep losing, to everyone, over and over and over again, and that describes Polish peasantry for about the last 300 years. Is anything changing in 2018?