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Attorney Catherine Lockhart and private investigator Liam Taggart are back in Balson’s third novel, this time with a new client, Lena Woodward, an elderly Holocaust survivor. Lena’s son doesn’t want them looking into anything, and forces a competency hearing in hopes of having himself appointed her guardian.
Meanwhile, Lena spends days telling Catherine about her childhood in Poland, the Nazi takeover of her town, her job as a seamstress that saved her from the first wave of Jews sent to concentration camps, her time with the resistance, her eventual trip to a camp, and her life since the war. Along the way, her childhood best friend, Karolina, is present, and the two girls try and save her twin babies during the war.
Lena has no idea what happened to the babies but if they survived, they would be 70 years old and she is determined to find them. The search takes Liam (and the author) to Poland, Israel and Germany, but it is Lena’s story that is so riveting.
In a departure from Balson’s previous novels, much of the story is told in the first person, befitting a book inspired by a Holocaust survivor’s true story. Readers who crave more books like Once We Were Brothers and The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah will be enthralled by Karolina’s Twins.
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9/16 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
KAROLINA’S TWINS by Ronald H. Balson. St. Martin’s Press (September 6, 2016). ISBN 978-1250098375. 320p.
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