Tuesday, June 30, 2009 11:56 AM CDT
Book Review: 'Skeletons at the Feast,' By Chris Bohjalian
Review by Juanita Sherwood
Chris Bohjalian’s books are always a good read. His topics vary, the plots are intriguing, the characters sympathetic, and the endings often a surprise.
“Skeletons at the Feast” does not disappoint in any of the above. The setting is World War II behind German lines. The characters are an interesting lot.
As the book opens, the war in Europe is winding down. Anna Emmerich and her family, wealthy land owner/farmers in Poland, are preparing to flee from “Ivan,” their name for the Soviet army that is advancing from the east. Anna, her mother, and younger brother are going to go west by horse and wagon to avoid the Soviets.
One of her older brothers is already on the lines fighting for the Fatherland. Her twin brother and father are in uniform and plan to join their colleagues in the military as soon as the family is evacuated.
Also along is Collum Finella, a military prisoner who had been sent by government authorities to help harvest the crops on the Emmerich estate. The other prisoners who had been assisting with the harvesting have gone back to their captors, but Anna’s father had obtained permission to have one stay and that happened to be Collum.
Other characters are Uri Singer, a young Jewish man masquerading as a German soldier, and Cecile, a young French woman imprisoned in a work camp. Both of these characters have had some difficulties with the Nazi regime that they had either managed to avoid and/or to exist by perseverance.
At first, the Emmerich family had been glad to see Hitler take over Poland. They considered themselves German; at the settlement of World War I, however, their estate had ended up as part of Poland, and they had been Polish citizens for nearly 20 years. They were glad to be “home” in Germany after the Nazis took Poland.
Their daily lives were interrupted by the war, but being in a rural area and producing food for the Fatherland made them better off than many under the cloud of Nazi rule.
Uri Singer’s family had been taken by the Nazis. Uri was not with his sister or parents at the moment of their capture and had no idea whether they were on the train that he was or not.
After riding east for some time, he manages to jump off the train as he is tossing the contents of a “slop” bucket out the door of the cattle car he is riding on. The train was picking up speed, soldiers shot at him, but barely wounded him, and he managed to survive in various roles for more than a year, killing as many Nazis as he could and sabotaging crucial infrastructure here and there.
Cecile and other young women who were residents of a work camp were treated poorly, barely existing, and then ordered to march west. They finally are put to work in another camp, but as the German lines are pushed back militarily, they again are marched west. It would have been easier to have given up and died, or to have given the guards a reason to shoot them, as some did.
The book chronicles the movements of each: the Emmerich party, Uri, and Cecile. The effects of the war coming to them are chronicled with intense descriptions. Eventually, all converge and what happens there is unexpected.
The book is a reminder that all who lived in the Nazi regime were not supporters of the Nazi actions and policies. It is also a tribute to the human spirit and its resilience.
Sherwood of Charleston is a retired reading teacher.
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