• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Jody Hadlock

Author of The Lives of Diamond Bessie

  • Book
    • About the Book
    • The Story Behind the Story
    • What’s Fact & Fiction
  • Bio
  • For Book Clubs
  • News & Events
  • Other Writing
  • Newsletter
  • Contact

historical fiction

Book Recommendation: Lilac Girls

June 12, 2017 By jody hadlock

Lilac GirlsThe horrors of the Nazi concentration camps are well-known, but until I learned of Martha Hall Kelly’s novel, Lilac Girls, I didn’t know there was one just for women. And I had never heard of Caroline Ferriday, the New York socialite who helped a group of Ravensbruck prisoners, the ones who survived horrific medical experiments.

Lilac Girls is told from the perspectives of three characters: Ferriday; Herta Oberheuser, the only female doctor at Ravensbruck; and a fictional Polish prisoner, Kasia Kuzmerick, based on a composite of some of the women who lived to tell their stories.

Much is known of Josef Mengele, the Nazis’ “Angel of Death” at Auschwitz, who performed unspeakable medical experiments on thousands of twins. But the doctors at Ravensbruck were just as sinister. To Kelly’s credit, she doesn’t portray Oberheuser solely as an evil person but makes her three-dimensional.

The details of the experiments on the women — who became known as the Rabbits because the damage to their legs made them hobble around — are difficult to read, but It’s important to tell these stories. We can never forget the atrocities committed during the Holocaust.

Lilac Girls spans two decades, from the late 1930s to the late 1950s, so it’s not just a “war” story. The book also focuses on the aftermath, when the Ravensbruck survivors went back home. In Poland, they had to deal with communism, and Kelly touches on how the system also restricted their freedom.

I’ll let you read the book to find out how the lives of Ferriday and the Rabbits came together. You won’t be disappointed. In short, Lilac Girls is the perfect blend of history and fiction.

 

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: Caroline Ferriday, Herta Oberheuser, historical fiction, Holocaust, Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly, Ravensbruck

Orphan Train (review)

April 10, 2017 By jody hadlock

Orphan Train- ReviewRecently, I attended a Dallas Museum of Art “Arts & Letters Live” event featuring author Christina Baker Kline. The event focused on Kline’s newest novel, A Piece of the World, about the relationship between the famous painter, Andrew Wyeth, and his muse, Christina Olson. I haven’t read the book yet (have an entire to-be-read shelf), but I wanted to take the opportunity to say a few words about Kline’s previous bestselling novel, Orphan Train, one of my favorite books over the past couple of years.

Orphan Train is based on a long-forgotten episode in our country’s history. From 1854 to 1929, orphaned or abandoned children were taken by train from the East Coast to the Midwest to be adopted, which usually meant working on a farm or some other form of servitude.

It was a hard life for these children, which Kline illuminates so vividly in her novel. She intertwines the lives of two women: 91-year-old Vivian, an orphan train rider taken to Minnesota in 1929, who eventually retires in Maine, and 17-year-old Molly, a troubled foster child assigned to a community service project with Vivian to avoid juvenile detention.

While the characters are fictional, the events Kline depicts are tragically all too true. More than three million copies of Orphan Train have sold, and it’s easy to see why. Great storytelling attracts readers, but I believe there’s also something else at play.

I agree with Elizabeth Gilbert’s theory, laid out in Big Magic, that ideas are constantly swirling around us “searching for available and willing human partners.”

There are people who have passed on who want their stories told, and whose lives may be bundled up under a major event, like the orphan trains.

Kline stumbled upon this part of America’s history during a family vacation to North Dakota, in a local historical society’s nonfiction book on the subject.

The story was waiting to be told, and fortunately, Kline accepted the invitation to inspiration.

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: Christina Baker Kline, fiction, historical fiction, historical novel, Orphan Train

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
 

Copyright © 2023 Jody Hadlock · Site: Ilsa Brink · Stock photos © James Thew & Aleksandra Konoplya