This one won the Carnegie Medal because it "is a powerful and moving story that cleverly connects the present with the past." Oh, my, does it! I LOVED it. I couldn't put it down. All 424 pages of it. The suspense is unbelievable. I thought I knew what happened. Well, kind of. But the ending still took me by surprise. The bitterness of the son. The easy forgiveness of the granddaughter, Tamar.
The book goes back and forth between the 1940s and modern day. In the 40's, Tamar and Dart are two Dutchmen who went to Britain, became undercover agents, and parachuted into the Netherlands to help the Dutch Resistance against the Nazis. While I read many books about the Dutch Resistance, this one tops them all. I was obsessed with reading the parts of the book that took place in the 1940s. All the details about secret codes and run-ins with Nazis. The murders and the consequences. The renegades of the Dutch resistance and the people who tried to keep them under control. And there were so many Dutch who helped with the resistance. Normal people who risked their lives to save other people.
But this isn't just a war book. It's a love story. Tamar is in love with Marijke. Then Dart meets her and falls in love with her, too. What a love triangle this forms and their actions form the plot of the novel. The modern day story has Tamar, a teenage girl, trying to find out about her dead granddad and her grandmother, Marijke, who is in the nursing home with dementia. The two stories combine with such force.
The ending was slightly disappointing to me for some reason and I 'm not sure why. I liked the modern story ending, but Tamar and Dart's story jaded me a bit. Maybe I was disappointed in what happened and that caused me to not like the ending. I'm not sure. But I do know that this novel is one of the best historical fiction novels I've ever read. I know I'll nominate this one for the next Abe award.
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