Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Emilie’s heart stops as she takes in her childhood sweetheart hunched in a tattered prisoner’s uniform, the light lost from his face. Her new husband, Otto, said this was a camp for criminals. He should know, he’s the doctor. But Danner would never have broken the law.
As she looks into Danner’s beautiful brown eyes, she's transported back to their happy childhood in Munich. The friendship they shared. The way her heart once felt like it beat only for him. Before the Jewish laws were enforced and Danner pushed Emilie away to protect her, breaking her heart.
Now, Emilie rushes to find Otto, desperate for answers. But when she discovers him waiting with confidentiality papers for her to sign, she realizes her husband has been lying. This isn’t a place to treat sick criminals, but to murder the innocent. And Otto tells her if she doesn’t help, they'll both die.
Her hands shake as she receives her instructions. But as she rushes back to the sickbay, searching for a way to escape, her gaze lands on Danner once more. In his eyes, she can see something that almost looks like hope…
The thought of losing her first love again tears Emilie’s heart in two. She's determined to keep him alive, and perhaps she can alter the fate of more than just one prisoner. But can she save Danner? Or will she die trying to rescue the man she’s never stopped loving?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Nurse Behind the Gates to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Nurse Behind the Gates is the new book from Shari J.Ryan set during World War Two. It follows the story of a group of young people whose lives are deeply affected by the events which occurred during this time period. It’s a little bit different from a lot of the WW2 historical fiction that is out there at the moment in that it centres on the Dachau labour camp in Germany but has a balance between following an inmate and those on the outside who are working there.
The prologue opens in July 1942 as we meet Emilie newly married to Otto. They have spent the past five months living close to the camp at Dachau and Emilie has been selected to aid Otto and his Uncle Dietrich with his work in the lab/hospital. But Emilie was brought there under false pretences. Yes she was happy to stay at home and tend to the house for Otto as continuing her nursing studies at the university in Munich wasn’t a possibility for her at that time. But when asked to help out in the hospital little did she know what she was really there for and when she sees a familiar face she knows she can’t back out of what she has gotten herself into. There are too many precious lives at stake and one in particular.
The chapters set in and around Dachau were the strongest in the book because they felt really relevant to the overall story and they pushed the plot on. The labour camp which to all intents and purposes turns into a concentration camp has a dark and ominous feel to it. Emilie can never settle there and the reader can’t blame her at all. For she is fiercely opposed to what Hitler has started and continues to rein upon so many. Yet, through no choice she finds herself at the centre of evil and the dread, grief and tension she feels increases with every chapter. Things are dark and heavy and when she walks through those gates where it is claimed work will set you free she is fraught with tension, angst and unease.
At all times, she wants to do her utmost best for the people incarcerated there. They have been sent there because of their supposed criminal actions but when she hears words spoken that only one person could have possible said she knows that now Jews and other marginalised people in society are arriving to the camp. She must do everything in her power to save her friend Danner. After all, he was her first true love and that love has never diminished only rules and regulations have separated them. One could only think of the happy life that could have existed between the pair if Hitler had never come to power. But they find themselves where they do and now she is married to Otto but that won’t stop her from helping him in any way she can be it big or small.
I found Otto in the war years to be quite weak and spineless. He lived in a perpetual state of fear and was afraid to step out of line or try and do anything secretly in order to help Danner and others. I thought he was so cold considering he had grown up with Danner and was his best friend. Otto was afraid of what would happen to him if it was discovered what Emilie had become engaged in. I wish he would have had half the guts that Emilie did. She also came across as being much cleverer than he was. She wanted to put all her medical knowledge to good use. But to say the experiments and human research trials that were conducted were horrific would be an understatement and it was heart-breaking to see Emilie partake in something that she abhorred and even more so when she knew that one wrong move and Danner could be lost forever. Emilie demonstrated such courage and steadfastness whereas I think Otto fell apart. She had many layers to her which I think others around her underestimated. As for Danner, the chapters from his viewpoint were very well written and developed and I completely understood him as a character and developed great compassion for him. It wasn’t until the end that I realised one of his bunkmates Hans had previously featured in The Bookseller of Dachau and that is definitely a must read story.
The book chops and changes an awful lot with its timeline and to be honest I thought it would have worked better to start at 1933 and work its way consecutively to 1945 instead of being interspersed throughout with chapters moving back and forth. I felt this dragged the story backwards instead of continuously moving forwards. A dual timeline story works best for me moving back and forth between the past and the present day as in now rather than in the format in which it occurred here. I felt I was making progress with where the characters were in the war and what they were experiencing only to turn the page and it brought me back to their childhood. Yes, I understood this was to allow the reader to build up a complete picture of each character and how they changed over time and the reasons for this change but I just felt jolted from one period to another and I found myself wanting to read much more about how Emilie, Otto and Danner were coping at Dachau.
It was quite some time into the book before Emilie actually steps inside the gates of the camp and I was waiting for it to occur and when it did I wanted even more detail than we got. That’s not to say what I was reading wasn’t interesting. It was and to honestly it was fascinating the experiments that were carried out and the crazy reasons for them and I found my interest piqued as it was an aspect to the war I had known anything about. Towards the end things felt rushed once the Americans started bombing Munich and the surrounding areas including areas near to Dachau. I got the sense the author needed to get to the end of the story. A bit more fleshing out would have been welcome although the epilogue did tie up all the loose ends.
The Nurse Behind the Gates is a good story, although not my favourite by this author. The depth of love that Emilie had for Danner was real, heartfelt and never wavered despite the road the war took her on. She showed such maturity, bravery and strength in the way she dealt with things. The characters were well developed and the situations they find themselves in and the emotions they are forced to deal with and choices they have to make will break readers hearts. This is a story of love, friendship, survival and above all else hope. Hope is what will see them through the darkest of times. Readers of historical fiction will enjoy this just the structuring of the timeline let it down slightly for me.
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