About the book:
Title: The Last Year of the War
Author: Susan Meissner
Publisher: Berkley
Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa fourteen-year-old in 1943--aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity.
The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences.
Purchase a copy HERE
About Susan Meissner:
Susan Meissner is a USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction with more than half a million books in print in fifteen languages. She is an author, speaker and writing workshop leader with a background in community journalism. Her novels include As Bright as Heaven, starred review in Library Journal; Secrets of Charmed Life, a Goodreads finalist for Best Historical Fiction 2015; and A Fall of Marigolds, named to Booklist’s Top Ten Women’s Fiction titles for 2014. A California native, she attended Point Loma Nazarene University and is also a writing workshop volunteer for Words Alive, a San Diego non-profit dedicated to helping at-risk youth foster a love for reading and writing.
My Thoughts:
Have you ever left a good friend or have them leave you? As a Navy brat and wife of forty years I have. And I've watched my kids do the same. Friendship is a bond especially during difficult circumstances that hold us together.
Imagine with me for a moment the fear of being taken from your home and placed in an internment camp even though you've lived in America for twenty years. And then during one of the worst circumstances in your life you meet someone who is also going through one of the worst times in their life and you connect. That is the beautiful friendship of Elise and Mariko.
This book touched me and tore at my heart. Elise is determined to not forget her friend, Mariko. See Elise has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Something that my dad has just been diagnosed to be in the early stages of. These quotes touched me deeply.
“I’ve named my diagnosis after a girl at my Junior High School in Daven port – Agnes Finster – who was forever taking things that didn’t belong to her out of lockers. My own Agnes will be the death of me”
“Agnes will swallow me whole, inch by inch. Every day a little more. She will become stronger and I will become weaker…. I will forget forever the important things. The things that matter.”
Within the pages of this story Ms. Meissner weaves the past together seamlessly with the present, and shows the devastation of WWII.
This is the second book that I've read about internment camps, both within this year. Something that until this year I didn't know much about and I highly recommend it!
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