Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian

"Based on a real-life World War II diary, Bohjalian's (The Double Bind) 12th novel chronicles the last days of the Nazi regime through the eyes of an unlikely threesome. Anna Emmerich, an 18-year-old Prussian aristocrat, along with her mother and younger brother, is making a desperate attempt to journey west across the Reich out of the path of the advancing Red Army. Callum Finnella, Anna's lover and a Scottish POW who worked on the Emmerich family estate, is also traveling with the family. Uri Singer, a German Jew who escaped from a train bound for Auschwitz, is ironically the group's guardian as they travel through Germany. The novel is immensely readable, but the characters—the Jewish escapee, the heroic Allied soldier, and the beautiful Prussian aristocrat—seem more like archetypes than individuals. However, Bohjalian takes a fresh perspective and details the brutal realities of World War II in a novel that for once does not focus entirely on the Allies."

~Andrea Y. Griffith, Loma Linda Univ. Libs., CA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.