I did enjoy this book. Perhaps one of the biggest questions about WI I is how could the German civilians have let the death camps happen, and Blum provides some compelling possibilities.

The story itself is about Anna, who is a young woman at the beginning of the war, and her daughter Trudy, who is a German history professor at the University of Minnesota. The story switches between Anna and Trudy's experiences in Weimar, right next to KZ Buchenwald, and Trudy's later experiences as a proffesorial project to allow German expatriates to tell their stories about wartime Germany. As with many such novels, I did enjoy the different time perspectives; as readers, we learn about Trudy's past that she can't completely remember and about which her mother refuses to speak.

I would have given 4 stars, though, if the ending were better. The majority of Trudy's part of the story is her quest to understand her own personal history, and the last person she interviews just happens to be able to fill her in. Given the tensions between Trudy and Anna throughout the novel, I really would have preferred to see a reconciliation more on those lines, and might have even preferred that Trudy never does find out to the way the book ends. It was just a bit too facile, as though Blum was facing a deadline and threw in the last character rather than sorting through the mother-daughter relationship.