Copyright ©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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The terrible events of World War II in Europe have made it the setting for numerous novels. Poland and Germany are perhaps the most used areas because the horror of war was most seen and felt there. Many tragic stories of individuals and families are still emerging and can be reconstructed to make memorable reading. However, most of these novels cover a broad range of time, at least the total war period, and involve a large number of characters.
Not so in Bread upon the Waters by Anne deGraaf. In her first book for adults (she is the author of 18 children's books in recent years), she focuses a sharp light on one couple in Poland and an American spy. The novel covers only nine months in 1945, as German domination is replaced by an even more cruel Russian one at the end of the war.
As the book opens, it is January and twenty-year-old Hannah Muller is saying farewell to her new husband Tadeusz at the train station in Krakow. The Polish people have heard of the Russian terror to come, and Hannah and her mother, unlike native-Pole Tadeusz, have German citizenship. Hannah's father, a native German, has been working for the Nazis while secretly helping their Polish neighbors. Tadeusz Pickarz is a young engineer, a polish prisoner forced to labor for the Germans in Johann Muller's firm.
Hannah and her mother, being German, are free to leave and hope to board the train for Dresden if they can find space. But a man watching them in the station warns them they should not go to Dresden, and they find a place on a freight train going to Breslau. Thus begins the separate odysseys of the couple and of the man who had given Hannah the warning-American--born Jacek Duch.
The novel seems a simple thread of separation and struggle against wartime horrors, but deGraaf weaves an engrossing story of flashbacks and unsuspected contacts between the three. The relationship between Hannah and Tadeusz is made more poignant as Hannah remembers their marriage and Tadeusz's decision to join her church as well as her family. As she rides the freight away from him, she recalls the verses they had shared from Isaiah 43:2-5.
And Jacek's hardboiled exterior is understandable after reading about his training with army intelligence and the terrible personal price he paid as a prisoner during most of the war.
The nine months of separation, wandering, and horror are also the period needed for a new human life to form. Hannah and Tadeusz's son is born, with much help from Hannah's former housekeeper, and they leave to search for a new life elsewhere. Jacek, still a U.S. undercover agent, manages to obtain a position in the new Soviet-run Polish government. The novel ends with Jacek's celebration of Polish liberation. It is ironic from history's viewpoint. This book is the first in a new series, The Hidden Harvest, and readers will be eager to see the who, what, where, and when of future titles in the series.
There are a few things about the writing that make this less than a perfect novel, suchas flashbacks told with too much narrative and sentences that are sometimes choppy, but never enough to detract from the strong characters and vivid action. You'd think after having so many World War II novels, that your senses would be dulled. The horror and personal tragedy is very real in Bread upon the Waters.
Copyright ©1996, ProMotion, inc.
www@acloserlook.com