Brianna Labuskes' The Lost Book of Bonn is a Historical fiction novel inspired by real events. This book focuses on three different women: American Emmy Clarke, German sisters Annelise Fisher, and Christiana Fisher. This turns out to be one woman's quest to return a precious book stolen by the Nazis to its rightful owner and the story of how that book united two very different sisters in their fight to survive World War II. But could it also be Emmy's path to finding a new beginning after a painful loss?
Germany, 1946: Emmy Clarke is a librarian, not a soldier who lost her husband at Normandy. She works as an archivist at the Library of Congress recruited as a temporary volunteer archivist to head to Offenbach am Main, where the government had set up an archival depot that held the millions of books the Nazis had plundered from occupied nations. It was part of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives unit, better known as the Monuments Men which is a real group. Her co-worker/boss is Major Wesley Arnold who was one of the Monuments Men until he was injured.
The Offenbach am Main Archival Depot holds millions of books that the Nazis plundered. Its work may get less attention than returning art to its rightful owners, but for Emmy, who sees the personalized messages on the inside of the books and the notes in the margins of pages, it feels just as important. On Emmy’s first day at work, she finds a poetry collection by Rainer Maria Rilke, and on the title page is a handwritten dedication: “To Annelise, my brave Edelweiss Pirate.” Emmy is instantly intrigued by the story behind the dedication and becomes determined to figure out what happened.
The hunt for the rightful owner of the book leads Emmy to two sisters (Annelise & Christina Fischer), a horrific betrayal, and an extraordinary protest against the Nazis that was held in Berlin at the height of the war by a group called Women of Rose Street. Hundreds of brave women (including Christina) gathered in the streets after their Jewish husbands were detained by the Gestapo. Through freezing rain and RAF bombings, the women faced down certain death and did what so few others dared to do under the Third Reich. They said no.
With Wesley's help, Emmy grapples with her own ghosts as she begins to wonder if she’s just chasing two more. What she finds instead is a powerful story of love, forgiveness, and courage that brings light to even the darkest of postwar days. There are two other storylines going on: Annelise in 1937-38 and Christina in 1943 with the Abwehr or German resistance. In 1937, Annelise is a 16-year-old living in Bonn, Germany. She is what's called an Edelweiss Pirate, a group that refuses to conform to Hitler's ideology.
She dresses outlandishly and spends much of her time in the nearby mountains with other youths who share her views. She and her friends have become involved in prank-like behavior toward the Reich hoping to wake up the general population to the atrocities being committed by their own government. The question becomes what will they do as the tactics of government harden. Things become much more dangerous when she falls for Eitan Basch, a Jewish boy who is afraid he'll be deported, or worse.
Christina, who is my second favorite character, is the perfect Hitler Youth or Hitlerjugend. She likes order and deals well with rules. She joined the Bund Deutscher Madel, the group intended for all girls. She even goes as far as to follow Annelise and Eitan around and nearly gets them both killed. But 6 years later (1943) we discover that Christina has been living a double life. She's actually working with the Americans to help spy on Hitler's people hoping to end the War and to make up for the hurt she caused her own sister.
One of the best scenes of the book was when Aryan women stood up to the Nazis under Goebbels and demanded that their Jewish husbands be released. As mentioned above, this actually happened. This made such noise in Germany, that even Hitler ended up backing down. It's too bad these same Germans didn't stand up sooner to Hitler and his Third Reich, instead of allowing him to put fear into their hearts when it came to the Jewish people, gypsies, and anyone else who was not considered Aryan including gay people.
My favorite character was Annelise. She and her friends actually tried hard to change people's minds. While the Hitler Youth worked to promote the Nazi party's agenda, the Edelweiss Pirates opposed Nazism and engaged in activities to undermine the Nazi control. An increasing number of teens and their parents became outraged by the use of the Hitler Youth organization to train children for combat and brainwash them into the Nazi ideology. Members spray-painted anti-Hitler messages on walls and buildings, threw bricks through munition factory windows, and even dumped sugar into the gas tanks of Nazi cars. Most of the group were between 14-18.
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