First published 2015
Eastern Europe, 1944. Priska, Rachel, and Anka suspect they are pregnant when the Nazis tear them from their husbands. Rachel arrives at Auschwitz not knowing her husband is dead. Priska travels to the camp with her husband but guards separate them immediately. Anka waits at Auschwitz hoping to see her husband again. The SS has murdered the rest of their families. These three women conceal their pregnancies from Josef Mengele and other Nazi doctors. They work grueling shifts while nearly starving. Discovery means death for them and their unborn children. In April 1945, as Allied forces approach, guards force the inmates onto trains bound for Mauthausen concentration camp. The seventeen day journey becomes a nightmare of overcrowding and starvation. The women must survive until liberation while protecting the lives growing inside them. Their determination to bring their children into the world drives them through impossible conditions.
Genres: holocaust, historical-fiction, 20th-century, world-war-ii
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, survival
Setting: Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Eastern Europe
Period: 1944, 1945
385 pages · Hardcover · Harper
Content warnings: death, pregnancy-loss, violence