Reviewed by Emma Crowley
She looked at the empty cradle where her baby had been. Her heart felt tattered and empty, like the hollow streets of Berlin after its people began to live in fear.
Berlin, 1934. Homes once filled with laughter stand empty as the Nazi party’s grip on the city tightens. When Anna Tiegel’s beautiful best friend catches Reich Minister Goebbels’ special attention, an impulsive act to save her brings Anna under his unforgiving scrutiny. First, she loses her job, then slowly, mercilessly, she finds her life stripped away. After her father is killed by the Nazis, Anna’s final hope is to escape to America with her boyfriend Eddy, but when she reaches his apartment on the agreed date, she finds it deserted. Alone and pregnant, the future feels terrifying, but she must try to protect the life inside her.
Rhode Island, 1957. Peggy Bailey stares in shock at the faded photograph of two laughing women which her beloved adoptive mother struggled to pass on to her before she died, whispering ‘It was inside your baby blanket when we brought you home’. As Peggy continues to stare, she realises that she has seen one of the girls before, in the most unlikely of places… Bursting at the realisation, she embarks on a mission which takes her across America to find the truth behind her heritage. Nothing, however, could prepare her for the tragic story her actions uncover…
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Lost Mother to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Lost Mother is the new book from historical fiction author Catherine Hokin. It’s a dual timeline story of sorts, I say this because a lot of the books I read with dual timelines are set in the present day and then perhaps back during the war years. Here the story takes place in the late 1950’s and then goes back to the pre war years and in turn the war itself. In New York in 1935, in the brief prologue, we are introduced to Anna. She is filled with longing and pain and she would give anything to have her baby back in her arms. She is wretched and afraid and instantly the reader wonders what has happened to her for her to be in this state of separation and feeling this way? Fast forward to Rhode Island in 1957 and we meet Peggy. She is at a time in her life when so many questions remain unanswered and so many words left unsaid. Her mother has just passed away and as she had been her carer in those last few months now Peggy feels lost, adrift, isolated and full of pain. She is rudderless with no idea what to do but there is a puzzle she could try solving if only she was brave enough to do it.
On her deathbed her mother left her a photo of her real mother. It showed two young women in a hoppegarten in Germany. Peggy is afraid that Germany has a very deep claim on her and she is not sure if she is willing and able to assert this claim given the consequences that revelation might bring. Peggy goes back and forth an awful lot as to what she should do. Whereas I thought, really she has nothing to lose she should just go for it. When she realises that one of the women in the picture is actress Louise Baker, who is still alive and working in Hollywood, Peggy’s mind is made for her. She sets off on a road trip across America until she reaches Los Angeles. Is this the city where all her questions will be answered? A change in her life’s direction and a confrontation may await. Can she cope with what she discovers and at the same time can she boost her career as a journalist and make it big in a new city? Or is the story she is pursuing just too personal to be splashed across the pages of a newspaper?
To be honest I didn’t really care for Peggy, all that much. Initially she came across as weak, insecure and indecisive and I just couldn’t gel with her at all. I was glad when she reached Hollywood because then we started to be brought back to the past and this aspect of the story I found to be much more interesting and gripping. Yes, we needed Peggy in the later years carrying out her search/quest in order to tie the two strands of the story together and to complete the bigger picture but I found myself rushing through chapters from her perspective when they appeared in order to get back to Anna’s story which really grew in intensity the further it progressed. Peggy has the task of finding Louise Baker and getting answers but when someone is cold and aloof, they mightn’t be willing to give all the answers in order to protect their own skin. It’s only towards the end I felt that Peggy grew a real backbone and started using her investigative journalistic skills to the max. She was pushing forward in seeking the truth and wouldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. After all the answers she seeks although they may be detrimental to others she needs to find them to satisfy her own personal issues and to resolve her past. Yes there was some love interest for her along the way but if that had been omitted it wouldn’t have bothered me in the slightest as it really isn’t a major focus of the overall plot.
Anna was the stand out character for me. She grew up in Berlin and along with her friend Marika in 1939, after attending drama school was about to audition for UFA, Germany’s biggest and oldest film company. A job here meant an illustrious career awaited. Marika was very different to anyone that Anna had ever met before. She was a whirlwind in that she was charming and ambitious but at the same she was nobody’s fool and she was spoiled, selfish, and ruthlessly competitive. I didn’t like Marika one bit, I always thought she believed herself too good for a friendship with Anna and that she would walk all over her to get what she wanted for more gain and fame. Anna has a relationship with Eddy, a trainee director, but even Marika doesn’t see fit that this should last and happiness be found. With the rise of Hitler and his propaganda, laws and cruelty the girls were stuck between a rock and a hard place especially as Joseph Goebbels the minister for propaganda for the Nationalist Socialist Party really sets his teeth into the pair.
Here is where I felt, there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing without much happening and I think it could have been shortened and the real major part of the story would have gotten going much quicker. For reasons I won’t go into, Anna finds her life torn in two and what was promised for her is no more. An act of betrayal and just pure selfishness and worrying about one’s own personal ego and further career development leaves Anna in danger and from this point on the story ramped up a gear and the momentum did not let up until the very last page. I became deeply invested in Anna’s story. She wanted just to fall apart but she knew she couldn’t given what she had discovered about her personal circumstances. I thought part two really gave us a fascinating insight into what happened to Anna once what she believed to be the worst that could befall her had happened. Little did she know what awaited her and part two was brilliantly written and I felt I was on a real journey with the character. America becomes the predominant setting and to be honest this was a real eye opener as one just presumes that although the Americans did join the war that not much happened on American soil rather the people continued on as best they could.
But this story shows the Germans and Nazi’s rule extended far and wide. That they got in and immersed themselves in communities and spread fear, their absurd ideas and radicalism everywhere. Anna was brave, forthright and she put her life on the line so many times all with one goal in mind and through her story I was given a glimpse into an aspect of America during the war that I had never heard about before. Anna really was caught, the love for someone that was hers but for a brief moment drove her own through the hardships, dangers and fears she endures and she earned my respect for the dignity she showed in what she went through. You could tell she is restless, angry and has one goal in mind but so many obstacles are thrown in her way. The direction she takes is a surprising one and I felt at times with her it was out of the frying pan and into the fire. She was a remarkable woman that was served such an injustice. As you read, you just hope that this wrong can be put right and some form of happiness be found for all involved. But old wounds do cut very deep.
What is it that for me books by Catherine Hokin that after a very slow start it’s only at the midway point or in this case the 60% mark that within a turn of a page they become gripping. It’s like an entirely different story is unfolding with a sentence or two things suddenly change and I become invested in what is happening. Part two had me even forgetting about Peggy and her search in the 1950’s. The beginning for me was too drawn out until we finally got to the heart of the story and we get to see what happened to Anna. I found there was too much extra information given in the initial chapters and I thought the reason for and the point where Anna and Marika are separated could have been covered in a chapter or two and therefore we would have reached the crux of the story much quicker. Admittedly, this is where I really became gripped and I thought things were much more exciting as we followed Anna’s journey. All that said, Catherine Hokin is a brilliant writer and each of the three books that I have read by her have been fantastic after my initial issues which always resolve themselves. I’d just love to be hooked from page one because when the author really gets going its difficult to leave one of her books down. The Lost Mother is a beautiful and heart breaking read as mentioned on the front cover and definitely a worthy addition to the historical fiction genre.
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