Daughters of the Fatherland

Thank you NetGalley and Interactive Publications Pty Ltd for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Rosa always loved to read.  It was a hobby her mother loathed, but her father loved.  Living in a traveling Gypsy caravan meant needing to travel light – Rosa’s books were sparse but treasured because of the limitations, but reading keeps her out of trouble.  Her father and the leaders know they are being watched and other Gypsy groups have been arrested by German officials.  Any trouble the children raised with the Hitler Youth would only mean their group would be imprisoned, too.  Will the caravan make it to safety across the border, or will they end up in the concentration camps, too?

Jericho J. Johnson’s Daughters of the Fatherland juxtaposes the Romani Holocaust against the Hitler-backed film industry, focusing on the plight of the children on both sides of the war.  Johnson delivers an almost hard to believe tale showcasing how one German orphan girl, taken in by a Gypsy caravan ends up in a concentration camp before becoming the closest assistant and confidant to one of German’s leading film stars.  With lots of name dropping and drama, this tale is not for the faint of heart.

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I give Daughters of the Fatherland 3 out of 5 stars.  To be clear, this is an era I have read about extensively, both in fiction and nonfiction.  The amount of literature written from the perspective of the German citizens is low, and from the Romani viewpoint even lower.  I was interested in this book mostly because of this perspective.  However, there were moments of cruelty and abuse in this book that were difficult to read – almost to the point of me setting this book aside and not finishing.  The violence against the children was just too much.  As mentioned above, this book also felt like too many varied plots shoehorned together to make a narrative that isn’t natural.  The starving mother whose daughter is adopted by the Gypsies, the family being abandoned by their caravan, their capture and imprisonment in the camps, the guards didn’t kill Rosa for her disobedience, Rosa’s “hiring” to work on the film set, Rosa becoming an important part of the director’s life, the director having a past with an actress who has a big name in American film, Rosa and the children employing a tactic to blow up a tank that felt ripped out of the Wonder Woman movie, etc.  It’s just too much to believe and felt too manufactured.

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Given the themes of child abuse and general violence, this book should be directed to more mature audiences over 16.  I would recommend this book to readers looking to learn more about the role cinema played in both propaganda and concentration camps, or about the Hitler Youth’s role in the war – I would use it as a jumping off point for further reading or research.  However, I cannot recommend this as a general read given the passages I found too disturbing and the near unbelievability of the plot.

I was initially drawn to this book because of the unique viewpoint and also the cover art.  The description gave the impression this was going to be a tame historical fiction read, but what the author delivered was a disturbing thriller with some childhood romance thrown in for good measure.  I chose the audiobook version and really loved the narrator.  I would definitely choose more audiobooks featuring Alyona Popova!

Daughters of the Fatherland released December 1^st, 2024 and is available from your favorite retailer, including Bookshop.org!

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