The Last Year Of The War Paperback – Import, 7 April 2020

I loved the story and the way it captured the feelings of the characters involved

I’ve previously read a couple of books by author Susan Meissner and they held my interest. This one, The Last Year of the War, continues in the same vein.The main character is Elise Sontag, whom we meet at the point in her life when she’s beginning to lose her memory to early stage Alzheimer’s Disease. Elise is on her way to San Francisco to find her long-ago friend Mariko Inoue. They’ve been apart for 60 years. Time is growing short for Elise who has to fight the encroaching memory thief that she’s christened Agnes. Agnes, it seems, is trying to confuse Elise as she travels. So Elise embarks on recalling every facet of her life from 1943 (when her father was first arrested as a Nazi sympathizer in their home in Davenport, Iowa) to the present moment as she journeys to San Francisco.The bulk of the story centers around three distinct events. First, there is the move of their entire family to an internment camp in Crystal City, Texas. Although both of Elise’s parents are German natives, they have been in the U.S. for twenty years. Both Elise and her brother Max are first generation Americans. It is at the internment camp that Elise meets Mariko, a first generation American born of Japanese parents. Being of the same age, the girls become very close friends. I found this portion of the story very interesting as I had no idea that German immigrants were interned as well as the Japanese.The second event is the repatriation of Elise and her family to Germany during the height of World War II. Through her eyes we see the ruin of a beautiful country and the fear that was a constant in the lives of the German citizenry. Normally a reader is given a look at things from the Allied perspective of the war, but through Elise’s eyes, we see a young girl who speaks very little German thrust into an alien way of life. She must remember not to speak when outside the family because as an American she will be seen as the enemy.The third event that changes Elise’s life is her marriage to an American GI at the end of the war. He brings her to California where his family’s wealth is almost overwhelming to Elise who spent her teen years with almost nothing except the clothes on her back. The family is completely dysfunctional yet in spite of that Elise finds her way to becoming a woman with a backbone. Her own family, however, chooses to remain in Germany.And when Elise finally gets to San Francisco she learns that Mariko is on her death bed. Has she arrived too late?Altogether a coming of age story set against the backdrop of World War II, The Last Year of The War is another winner from Susan Meissner.

Worth your time to read this. I haven’t finished it yet because I am savouring ever chapter.

This was such a beautiful story. Gave me many hours of enjoyed reading.

I love this author and style, why I bought this one. The story was good, developed well but for me it was very sad, I had a hard timeGetting threw it. Sometimes it's just my mood and what's going on at the time. Glad it had a good ending