The Kommandant's Girl

by Pam Jenoff

It is the eve of World War II. Emma and Jacob Bau have only been married three weeks when the Nazi invasion of Poland begins. Jacob is a ringleader in the resistance and must disappear underground to carry on his work against the Nazi forces. Emma and her parents are forced into the Jewish ghetto to survive, but then Emma is spirited away and brought to the home of Krysia, Jacob's Catholic cousin, where she changes her identity to Anna Lipowski, a gentile. Her heart is captured by the tiny three-year-old blonde Jewish orphan who is also under Krysia's care.

At a dinner party that Krysia hosts for the German Kommandant, Georg Richwalder, the handsome Kommandant is quite attracted to Anna, and she accepts his offer of employment as his personal assistant, planning to use her new position to help the resistance and to uncover Nazi secrets.

Anna misses Jacob terribly, but she didn't expect to like the Kommandant, or to find him attractive. News about what the Nazi's are doing to the Jews that are being sent to the work camps is terrifying, and Anna finds that she must compromise her safety and her marriage vows in order to gather information to help the resistance and her people. The Kommandant himself is emotionally torn between what he is forced to do for the Third Reich, and what he knows in his heart is right, and the chemistry between Anna and the Kommandant presents challenges for both of them and tests her loyalties to Jacob and her heart. As the war progresses, Anna and her family edge ever closer to discovery and personal danger, until the story climaxes in a shattering finale.

Pam Jenoff is an exciting new author to watch. This is historical romance at its finest...a magnificent first novel by a very talented writer. It tells the heart-breaking story of what the holocaust meant to the Polish Jews in a fast-paced story that is impossible to put down. It is a very emotional roller-coaster ride that I will never forget.