These three books have several things in common. They are out of the past and they are set primarily in foreign countries. Beyond that, only the fact that they were all well done books compare them. FIELD GRAY (Putnam, 978-0-399-15741-7) is Phillip Kerr's latest Bernie Gunther novel; BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY (Philomel, 978-0-399-25412-3) is Ruta Sepety's look at WWII; THE SANDALWOOD TREE (Atria, 978-1-4165-9059-0) by Elle Newmark is set in India.
FIELD GRAY RANGES from the Cuba of the early 1950s back through the thirties in Germany through the divided post war Germany with east and west jockeying for supremacy. Bernie is captured off
Cuba in the 50s and sent back to German via the US for the war trials. He is caught between the American and French factions as well as a few others as well. He is forced to recount his actions as a prisoner of war to all parties involved, It is pure Bernie He plays all sides against the middle and lets the reader decide what if anything is the truth. I like Bernie He has gone through life pretty well making sure Bernie survives and getting rid of enemies along the way. He was a good cop who did not like the Nazis in the beginning. He is still a pretty good cop and apparently does not like much of any body now. But is a rather unreliable narrator at times. And he is a survivor, A really noir spy and cold war look back. It helps to have read at least some of the previous Gunther novels. The plot is elaborate and tricky, but well done. And it is really a study in characters. It is puzzling to figure out which is now the real Bernie. I wonder if he really knows. Incidentally, field gray refers to the color of the German field uniform, but can be given other interpretations as well.
Sepetys in the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee in WWII. This novel, BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY is her way of letting the world know what happened to the thousands of people who vanished during the ethnic cleansing of many countries. The story begins in 1941 when 15 year old Lina and her family and forced as prisoners of the Soviets to leave their home for work camps and literally death camps in cold Siberia. The women and children were sent separately from the from the already taken husbands. This particular group has quite a few people from the intellectual community in it. The tale is one of tragedy and horror as they are transported like cattle throughout the countryside to work and provide comfort and labor for their captors. Lina survives and makes it back from Russia to a world forever changed. This is a poignant and beautifully written story of hope, despair, courage, and fear. It is also a story of human tenacity as well as mendacity. Lina learns to love as well as to look at the real person before she judges them. The book has a haunting beauty in its bleak and horrific tale of cruelty and cold blooded murder. Yet kindness appears from the least expected places. A reminder of what has happened and could easily happen again.
THE SANDALWOOD TREE is really two stories in one tale. One is set in the late 1940s when India is getting its freedom from England and when the country is splitting off the area to be called Pakistan and separate the Hindi from the Muslims. Evie and Martin and their son Billy are coming to India on a research fellowship and will live in a small village. Martin is still struggling emotionally with problems from his stint in the service during WWII and the marriage is off kilter a bit. Today we would quickly diagnose post traumatic shock, syndrome,but then it pretty much went untreated unless really bad. Evie finds some letters in the house they are renting that date back nearly 100 years. She becomes engrossed in tracking down the stories of the two women who came to India and their back stories. While her life is in turmoil with the unrest and fighting going on between factions in India she learns of the problems besetting the two women. One was a lesbian sent to India by her family to escape disgrace and the other was a strong willed woman who wanted a different like than the one offered in England.Tthey lived in this cottage for years as their histories and lives became a part of the fabric of the community. One fell in love with an Indian gentleman and had his child. And this when English treated the Indians abominably as less than people almost. Evie meets a descendant of this child while researching at a local church. The stories of the two eras are entwined and Evie is able to learn what happened in the past as well as to learn what is to be done about her personal problems of the present. the depiction 'india is vivid and the people are well delineated in character. Her women are particularly strong. And the young lad is fiercely real. This provides another way to look at the legacy of
Gandhi as well as a different look at history.
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