Book: Rose Under Fire

Rose Under Fire

by Elizabeth Wein

Length: 384 pages

Format: Hardback
Price: Free, checked out from the school library

How I heard about it: my awesome YAL conference

Basic Premise: Civilian pilot Rose Justice is proud to assist the Allies in the war effort by ferrying aircraft to and from the European mainland. But when she is intercepted by unfriendly Germans, who don't care in the least that she is shipped off to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp.

My Take: 7 out of 10 (scale here)
This book was very good...eventually.  It was extremely slow to start, and the beginning was full of "wartime talk" - lots of military vernacular that had me slightly lost...not a good sign for YAL books.  That, coupled with the fact that it was pretty action-less had me having to put it down for a bit and then restart later.  It was so bad that I considered abandoning it, but three people had told me specifically that it was an excellent read.  And these weren't any ordinary three people either - they were readers I trust.  And it had been highly recommended at the conference.  So I pushed through.

SO glad I did.  Once it got going, it was WORTH IT.  I have read many, many books about concentration camps, and every time, I put the book down, look at the world today and wonder, "How is it possible that this happened? And within the last century?"  I was trying to think of a word accurate enough to describe the indescribable atrocities that occurred and came up way short.  A large portion of the book focuses on the "rabbits" as they were known to the prisoners.  These were women who became medical experiments.  Doctors would simulate wartime injuries by, for example, cutting open a woman's leg, filling it with gangrene, and then seeing what happens.  I remember hearing about this, and I have seen the movie The Debt so I was pretty familiar with the practice.  But ohmygoodness.  How DARE they.  When you are a nonviolent person but want to reach through the pages of a book and personally tear the flesh of the faces of people, you know you are reading something powerful.  And truly, other than the liberal use of the exclamation point (a personal pet peeve...and a totally snobbish one, I admit) I enjoyed the writing style. It really did feel like Rose was speaking the story.  It was a great book and one I would recommend.  Just beware the slow start.