Two Fatherlands (A Reschen Valley Novel Part 4) By Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger #BookReview #HistoricalFiction #WW2 @ckalyna @maryanneyarde

  

I am so excited to share my review of Two Fatherlands (A Reschen Valley Novel Part 4) by Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger. Thank you so much to The Coffee Pot Book Club for your invite to take part in this tour.

Two Fatherlands

A Reschen Valley Novel Part 4)

By Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger

It's a dangerous time to be a dissident...

 

1938. Northern Italy. Since saving Angelo Grimani's life 18 years earlier, Katharina is grappling with how their lives have since been entwined. Construction on the Reschen Lake reservoir begins and the Reschen Valley community is torn apart into two fronts - those who want to stay no matter what comes, and those who hold out hope that Hitler will bring Tyrol back into the fold.

 

Back in Bolzano, Angelo finds one fascist politician who may have the power to help Katharina and her community, but there is a group of corrupt players eager to have a piece of him. When they realise that Angelo and Katharina are joining forces, they turn to a strategy of conquering and dividing to weaken both the community and Angelo's efforts.

Meanwhile, the daughter Angelo shares with Katharina - Annamarie - has fled to Austria to pursue her acting career but the past she is running away from lands her directly into the arms of a new adversary: the Nazis. She goes as far as Berlin, and as far as Goebbels, to pursue her dreams, only to realise that Germany is darker than any place she's been before.

Angelo puts aside his prejudices and seeks alliances with old enemies; Katharina finds ingenious ways to preserve what is left of her community, and Annamarie wrests herself from the black forces of Nazism with plans to return home. But when Hitler and Mussolini present the Tyroleans with “The Option”, the residents are forced to choose between Italian and German nationhood with no guarantee that they will be able to stay in Tyrol at all!

 

Out of the ruins of war, will they be able to find their way back to one another and pick up the pieces?

I love a good series because it gives me more time to get to know the characters and the setting. Usually, though, I like to read them in order because that makes sense. Right?! However, when I was asked if I would like to read book 4 of this series, I thought, oh, well not. I settled into the story quickly enough, although there was a little adjustment period as I worked to figure out who everyone was and how they knew each other.

Technically, most of the characters are related in some way or another. Katharina is Annamarie's mother, and Angelo is her father, although Katharina and Angelo are not married. They both have their own spouses, and Katharina's husband raised Annamarie as his own, although Angelo wants a divorce, but that is proving challenging, and his son wants nothing to do with him—he is not having the best of times. But then,  Katharina isn't having the time of her life either, for Annamarie ran away from home, her eldest son is causing all sorts of trouble, and the construction of a reservoir near her home threatens to uproot her life. If this were set in modern times, they could have all ended up on one of those terrible trashy tv shows.

Annamarie's wants to become an actress. So, she ran away to follow her dreams. But the reality does not hold up to the imagination, and she finds herself barely scraping by. And then, she is offered a job at the Bund Deutscher Mädel. The BDM (The League of German Girls) could be her lucky break. The pay is good, but is she ready to become a signed up member of the Nazi party?

I will admit, when I am reading a book with multiple perspectives, there is generally one I prefer over the others, and there is sometimes a perspective I'm not too fond of. In this book, my absolute favourite one was Annamarie's, because I really loved her character. I was not a fan of Angelo's perspective, and this may have been because I didn't really understand it. There were too many characters that I didn't know, and I am not familiar with the particulars of this area of history. Although I studied the Second World War at school, my studies focused expressly on Germany and Russia, and I only covered the major events that I would need to pass the exam. This is likely why Angelo's chapters were not my favourite, but I will not hold that against the book, for there is always going to be someone who knows more than me who will thoroughly enjoy his chapters and will not understand what my issue is with them.

While I struggled a little with Angelo's chapters, I thrived with the others, and they utterly absorbed me. I would love to read the first books in the series so I can spend some more time with Annamarie and Katharina, and maybe even learn to like Angelo a little more!

I received a copy of this book from The Coffee Pot Book Club but you can grab yours can grab your copy at your favourite online bookstore - click HERE and it will give you the options of shops you can purchase this book at, just click on your favourite and it will take you right there. Magic!! 

Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger

 

Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger is an American author living in Austria. Her focus is on historical fiction. She has been a managing editor for a magazine publishing house, has worked as an editor, and has won several awards for her travel narrative, flash fiction and short stories. She lives with her husband in a “Grizzly Adams” hut in the Alps, just as she’d always dreamt she would when she was a child.

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