Four generations of mothers and daughters are affected by desperate wartime choices in Correa’s (
The Daughter’s Tale) ambitious third historical novel. In 1931, as the Nazis gain power in Germany, poet Ally is forced to send her biracial child out of the country to save her from being sterilized or killed. A generation later, Ally’s daughter Lilith faces her own terrible dilemma as Fidel Castro’s revolution hits Cuba. Nadine, the daughter Ally entrusts to strangers, soon unexpectedly finds herself in the middle of the fight to punish those who collaborated with the Nazi regime and to honor its victims. Later, Nadine’s daughter Luna pushes her mother to finally learn the truth about Ally’s and Lilith’s fates.
VERDICT Correa’s novel stands out in its attempt to trace the lingering individual and social consequences of wartime trauma in postwar Germany and revolutionary Cuba. It can be hard to keep track of all the characters and their intersecting lives, but this moving, if relentlessly bleak history of one family should appeal to fans of multigenerational stories set against the backdrop of global events.
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