American Shoes - Rosemarie Lengsfeld Turke; Garrett Turke

 American Shoes - Rosemarie Lengsfeld Turke; Garrett Turke

She read

Publication Date: Feb. 15, 2022

Based on the true story of the co author,  Rosemarie (Rosel) is the daughter of German immigrants.  She is born in New York; an American citizen.  In the 1930s, the family returns to Germany to visit her dying grandfather. After World War II breaks out, Hitler will not allow German nationals out of the country, so Rosemarie and her family must wait out the war there.  After the war, the United States would only allow American citizens and Jews into the country, so fifteen year old Rosemarie is separated from her parents and younger sister as she returns to the US to live with a distant aunt and uncle.

As Rosel embarks on a journey across the Atlantic and back to America aboard an ocean liner redesigned for troop transport, the horrors of the Nazi Germany of her childhood are revealed through her daily nightmares, an effective literary technique.   

The perspective of this book is a bit different; it is of the German citizens who did not support Hitler and the toll the madman’s actions took on their lives as they lost their homes, were displaced, survived bombings, forced conscription, refugee camps. Rosel must be particularly careful to hide the fact that she is actually an American. 

Beautifully written by Rosemarie and her son, American Shoes exposes the evil that can exist in the world, as well as the heinous aspects of war.  I had the feeling the book was written with teens and YA readers in mind. It is a tough story but there is so much to learn from it.

The past two years I have read a lot of books that focus on the effects of World War II; I have enjoyed all of them and think they are giving us a message for our times.  If only we would heed it. As I was reading, certain passages resonated:“lies spreading for years….like a plague”  “people were quick to believe anything that explained their misery or lessened their fear””people were quick to blame anything and anyone””how can people succumb to such blatant lies”.  Without spoiling too much, when I read  the postscript, I found some of the same feelings: “If we are not careful, what happened in Germany could happen here”. 

*****