In late May I read Rachel Seiffert's historical novel, Once the Deed is Done. It's set in northern Germany, during the final two months of World War II and in the immediate post-war period. For two months before the surrender, the British have advanced and have come to occupy a small town.
This town, once the site of a German (Nazi) labor camp/factory, whose forced laborers had been mostly deported from Poland and Ukraine, is now the site of a DP (Displaced Persons) camp. The story focuses on the activities and viewpoints of a woman who's a Red Cross worker from Britain, three German children who spend the summer of 1945 renovating a shepard's hut high in the hills of the town, a German couple who are hiding a very young Polish child who was abandoned in their barn, British military staff, and various characters who are living in the DP Camp. There is a mystery, too. What happened one frigid month in March 1945 when dozens of women deportees from the factory vanished?
I thought this novel was exceptionally well-done. I have an intense interest in 1945 Germany and the early post-war era and have read many histories on the subject. I can say that Seiffert did a tremendous amount of research for this novel. It was short-listed for the 2026 Sir Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize. Seiffert has been on the short-list for the Booker Prize at least once. I loved her handling of the multiple viewpoints.
This summer I also plan to read another book that's on the Scott shortlist. That's The Pretender by Jo Harkin.
Well, I read my first book for my 20 Books of Summer. This week I galloped through At Midnight Comes the Cry, the 10th and most recent book in the Claire Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mystery series. It seems that this has been announced as the final book in the series. I have read them all, starting with my favorite, the first book, In the Bleak Midwinter.
Although this latest entry in the series received very high ratings on Goodreads, it was one of my least favorites. There's a great deal of action, and I found it chaotic. The premise was difficult for me, too: A white supremacist group in the Adirondacks is on the verge of wreaking havoc. I found the themes difficult to read, especially because we're dealing with these issues all the time in real life in our country. I didn't feel that this novel added clarity to the issue, but even perhaps exploited it, which is a harsh criticism coming from me. I hope that other readers will think differently about it and I hope you will share them here.
I'm also reading Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout and have started The Black Death by Thomas Asbridge, a work of history.
