The German Heiress by Anika Scott ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

"Everybody stole.  Organized,  they called it.
They organized coal off moving trains.  They organized cars left alone in the streets.  They organized pipes from houses where unexploded bombs nested on the roofs.  Mostly, they organized food.  Dug up fields and slaughtered cows.  Hijacked trucks and robbed stores...Everybody organized one way or another. (p 1)

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April 2020; William Morrow; 978-0062937728
audio, ebook, print (384 pages); historical fiction

Clara Falkenberg, once Germany’s most eligible and lauded heiress, earned the nickname “the Iron Fräulein” during World War II for her role in operating her family’s ironworks empire. It’s been nearly two years since the war ended and she’s left with nothing but a false identification card and a series of burning questions about her family’s past. With nowhere else to run to, she decides to return home and take refuge with her dear friend, Elisa.

Narrowly escaping a near-disastrous interrogation by a British officer who’s hell-bent on arresting her for war crimes, she arrives home to discover the city in ruins, and Elisa missing. As Clara begins tracking down Elisa, she encounters Jakob, a charismatic young man working on the black market, who, for his own reasons, is also searching for Elisa. Clara and Jakob soon discover how they might help each other—if only they can stay ahead of the officer determined to make Clara answer for her actions during the war.

Propulsive, meticulously researched, and action-fueled, The German Heiress is a mesmerizing page-turner that questions the meaning of justice and morality, deftly shining the spotlight on the often-overlooked perspective of Germans who were caught in the crossfire of the Nazi regime and had nowhere to turn. (From GoodReads)

My Review:

I read a lot of novels about WWII and always find it very interesting to find one from the German perspective.

The war has been over for two years and the allied forces are busy trying to find war criminals to prosecute. Germany is still in disarray with people struggling to find food and shelter so it's fairly easy to hide from the authorities with a fake identification card.  Margarete Muller is the fake name that Clara Falkenberg is using to try to return home.  During the war, she ran her family ironworks company and used forced labor and inhumane practices to make cars and planes.  As she returns home to find her best friend, she is also realizing how many people she hurt during the war and beginning to question her actions. She always felt that she had done her best to protect her workers but the world saw her differently. Was she a cruel inhumane person, only concerned with increasing her family's wealth or was she compassionate and caring and just caught up in the family's legacy? The German Heiress is an excellent novel about someone making a personal journey and trying to make sense of their past while they strive for a better life in the future. It's an extremely well-researched novel about love and family, acceptance and betrayal and forgiveness and redemption.

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Susan Roberts lives in North Carolina when she isn't traveling. She and her husband enjoy traveling, gardening and spending time with their family and friends. She reads almost anything (and the piles of books in her house prove that) but her favorite genres are Southern fiction, women's fiction, and thrillers. Susan is a top 1% Goodreads Reviewer. You can connect with Susan on Facebook, Goodreads, or Twitter.

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