First published 2019
Cilka Klein is eighteen when Soviet soldiers liberate Auschwitz-Birkenau. Freedom should await her, but instead she faces new accusations. The Soviets charge her with collaborating with the Nazis, ignoring the impossible choices she made to stay alive in the camps. They sentence her to fifteen years in the Vorkuta gulag in Siberia. At Vorkuta, Cilka must learn to survive all over again. The brutal conditions and harsh climate test every prisoner who enters. Cilka draws on her intelligence, her ability to connect with others, and her physical appeal to navigate this new form of imprisonment. She builds relationships that might protect her and finds ways to endure each day in the frozen wasteland. This sequel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz follows one woman's determination to live through unimaginable circumstances. Cilka's story reveals how survival requires constant adaptation and the will to keep going when hope seems impossible.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, resilience, survival
Setting: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Vorkuta, Siberia
Period: 20th-century
352 pages · Hardcover · St. Martin's Press
Content warnings: abuse, violence