1939, Poland: Would you save a child in a warzone? Marcin is just hoping to keep himself safe during the Nazi invasion.

But once he befriends his Jewish neighbors, his fate is sealed, and when their building is raided by the Nazis, Marcin finds himself hiding their son, Adam.

Marcin vows to keep Adam safe at all costs. But as he starts an impossible journey across the borders of wartorn Europe towards safety, he begins to realize Adam isn’t the only child who needs his help. And when they encounter more orphaned children in hiding, Marcin becomes determined to save as many as possible. Even if that will put his own life—and Adam’s—at terrible risk.

What Adam and the other orphans don’t know, is that Marcin has a secret. He did something terrible in Poland. Something he can never forgive himself for. Until many years later, where he’s living his life peacefully in rural Washington, USA, and he answers a call from another mother in distress. Marcin is needed again. But this time, it’s Adam’s daughter who needs him…

My Review

It was interesting at the end of the book to read what the author had to say about trauma, grief, guilt, and the effect of alcoholism on many of those who had survived the war. My Romanian-Jewish mother, diagnosed with agoraphobia and chronic anxiety, I now believe was suffering from PTSD following her escape from the Nazis in Vienna in 1938.

My father on the other hand, was Polish. He lived in the countryside, not in the city, and by the time the Germans had taken Warsaw, he had joined the army and was taken to a prisoner-of-war camp north of Siberia. Like some of the orphans in the book, he ended up in the UK, where he remained.

In spite of her mental illness, my mother never drank alcohol, but was addicted to prescription barbiturates. My father drank a bit, but not to excess. I have no experience of trauma-induced alcoholism, or heavy drinking, as we see with Clara, her father or Marcin. Clara also uses recreational drugs – again I have no experience.

I can, however, see why alcohol and drugs would provide an escape from the reality and horror of war. But in Marcin’s case, we are seeing his guilt as well.

Clara also witnessed something no child should ever see. I can imagine how it must have affected her, but I still found her behaviour a bit self-indulgent many years later when her mother is ill and undergoing chemotherapy. My sons would probably accuse me of a lack of empathy because I am a ‘boomer’ and we don’t get it. So forgive me if I come across as judgmental, but I really wanted her to put her mother first before it was too late.

The individual stories of the rescued children like Sara, Zophia, Anna and the others were beautifully written and very emotional. How can we even begin to imagine being thrown from a train while our parents were taken away to be gassed in a concentration camp? It doesn’t bear thinking about and I hope it never happens again. We can live in hope.

Many thanks to @lovebookstours for inviting me to be part of #TheLastOrphan blog tour.

About the Author  

Carly Schabowski is a lecturer and the USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction, including The Rainbow, with translations in over ten countries. She is a former journalist, and is currently an associate lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, where she completed both her MA and PhD.

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