City of Women
Author: David R. Gillham

Who do you trust, who do you love, and who can be saved? — It is 1943 -- the height of the Second World War -- and Berlin has essentially become a city of women. — Sigrid Schröder is, for all intents and purposes, the model German soldier’s wife: She goes to work every day, does as much with her rations as she can, and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law, all the while ignoring the horrific immoralities of the regime. But behind this façade is an entirely different Sigrid, a woman who dreams of her former lover, now lost in the chaos of the war. Her lover is a Jew.

But Sigrid is not the only one with secrets.

A high ranking SS officer and his family move down the hall and Sigrid finds herself pulled into their orbit. A young woman doing her duty-year is out of excuses before Sigrid can even ask her any questions. And then there’s the blind man selling pencils on the corner, whose eyes Sigrid can feel following her from behind the darkness of his goggles.

Soon Sigrid is embroiled in a world she knew nothing about, and as her eyes open to the reality around her, the carefully constructed fortress of solitude she has built over the years begins to collapse. She must choose to act on what is right and what is wrong, and what falls somewhere in the shadows between the two.

In this page-turning novel, David Gillham explores what happens to ordinary people thrust into extraordinary times, and how the choices they make can be the difference between life and death.

I saw a copy of this book at Barnes and Noble a couple of years ago and after reading the cover blurbs, put it on my wishlist at PaperbackSwap.com. Received a copy from them a few months ago and finally got around to reading it. It was a somewhat difficult book to read given the subject matter but as the novel developed, it kept me interested and turning the pages.

The novel takes place in Berlin in 1943 at the height of WWII. The novel is called "City of Women" because most of the adult male population has been drawn into the Nazi war machine. Berlin is a place where the remaining Germans are living lives to avoid the police, where a wrong word slipped against the powers that be could lead to torture or to a Nazi concentration camp. This is the world where Sigrid Schroder lives with her mother-in-law while her husband is serving in the army on the Russian front. Sigrid meets one of her neighbors, a young woman named Ericha, at a local cinema who begs Sigrid to tell the local police the she came to the cinema with Ericha. The police suspected Ericha of crimes against the State. Sigrid subsequently gets involved in helping Ericha protect and hide Jews from the Gestapo in a sort of underground railway. This reminded me somewhat of Anne Frank's story. Sigrid also meets a Jewish man at the cinema who becomes her lover but can she trust him?

I was really unaware of how the everyday citizenry of Germany were affected by the war and how some acted against the Nazi policies while others just demurely went along with them even though they witnessed Jews being rounded up in the streets and sent away to concentration camps. Overall, this was a very engaging novel highlighting the brutality of the Nazis, the fear of the citizens and how some were trying to be redeemed in a very difficult situation.

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8/9/16: Including in the "G" authors bookring. Hope someone will enjoy it!

Looks like an interesting book and have chosen it from the ABC Author Letter "G" Bookring.

Released for the Feminism/Woman Power bookring.

Taken out of the feminism book-box, looking forward to reading it! Thanks for releasing :)