The Doctor’s Daughter is World War II fiction at its best. It shows how families can be divided by war and by political beliefs—and even misconceptions. The point of view alternates between the two protagonists, Sofia Amsler and Isaac Cohen, though Sofia’s story predominates. She and her mother are Jewish, but her father isn’t. He is recruited by the Nazis to care for their soldiers. He complies, thinking his efforts will enhance the status of their “Privileged Marriage” and increase the likelihood his wife and daughter will survive the war. Isaac is a young man who is separated from his father and mother in a Warsaw ghetto and his sister are taken to Auschwitz.
Due to her father’s position, Sofia and her parents live a rather posh existence on the family farm while Isaac and his family are starving in the ghetto. When Isaac and his sister are sent to Auschwitz, he is forced to be slave labor on Sofia’s family farm. As she watches the Nazi guards mistreat their prisoners, she determines to save them and recruits her parents into her daring plan.
Ryan doesn’t avoid the atrocities committed by the Nazis or Germans’ blind adherence to Hitler’s many grievances against Jews, Romani, and other ethnic groups he feels are inferior to Aryans. Instead she walks a fine line between simply describing rather than overplaying them. Because of the main subject matter (genocide), I find it hard to say I enjoyed this book, but it does provide a well-researched description of life as a Polish Jew in the 1940s. It is also a heart-warming story of the perseverance of hope during the most dreadful of conditions.
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The Doctor’s Daughter (Bookouture, April 28, 2022) is available through:
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