drey's library

The Baker’s Daughter is a story about a girl who grows up in wartime Germany, and the impact of the war on her family and her life. It is also the story of a woman who has to figure out what she really wants out of life – lucky as she is to have one that’s nowhere near as complicated as Elsie’s was.When we meet Elsie and her family, her parents own a bakery where Elsie helps out and her sister Hazel is in the Lebensborn program where good German women are tasked with producing the next generation of genetically superior Aryans… They’re Germans, proud of it, and proud of how well their troops are doing in the war. There are losses, of course, Hazel’s fiance Peter being one of them, but life goes on.Elsie’s life unrolls before us in alternating first-person narratives and letters to and from Hazel, describing the general sentiment’s change from pride to suspicion, revulsion, and shock. It’s a slow process, one where you’re cooked in the pot before you even realized the water was boiling. How could her own people do such unspeakably horribly things, to other Germans?It’s hard not to like Elsie. She’s smart, sassy, and eventually comes to the realization that her government is neither moral nor right. But even as life gets more difficult as a result of the war, she makes the decision to shelter Tobias – knowing that they’re all dead if she’s caught.Then we get to the present day, and Reba’s story. I didn’t like her at first – she’s running without knowing why or what from, and she’s not very nice to her fiancé. Then she thaws out a bit while talking to Elsie and her daughter Jean, and whaddaya know, she’s actually alright. A bit confused, maybe, but alright.I loved The Baker’s Daughter. I rarely read books set during WWII, I tend to get depressed at the thought that humanity could do so much harm to itself. And I can honestly say I’ve never read WWII books set in Germany, probably because I didn’t want to chance liking any German in that time period. I own that hangup though, and I’m really glad I gave this one a chance. As much as I hate what the Germans did during WWII, The Baker’s Daughter reminds me that there were some very very upstanding Germans who did whatever they could to save lives – at the risk of their own.Two thumbs up.drey’s rating: Outstanding!