The Lilac Girls

One of my FB friends suggested I read The Lilac Girls, a novel by Martha Hall Kelly, published in 2017. The recommendation came because I had read another novel about the concentration camps during WWII.  I am not particularly drawn to stories of The Holocaust, but I have found some of the narratives compelling. This is the story of three women brought together by Ravensbruck, a notorious concentration camp for women during WWII. It is the debut novel by Kelly, but it is a well-written, powerful story based in history, a story that is so compelling for the author that she is writing a prequel to the story that takes place during WWI.

The narrative is divided into segments by character, Kasia, Herta, and Caroline, so there are individual segments about one character, and then another character, and then a third.  This technique is used throughout the novel and allows the reader to build a relationship with each of the primary characters.  The narratives begin in 1939 and end in 1959, long after World War II ends, but the story has not.  It is important to read the entire narrative to understand the full circle of the events, which continue into the United States with the character Caroline,  a wealthy patron of the arts and former actress, who establishes a relationship with one survivor of Ravensbruck concentration camp and is able to arrange circumstances to bring full closure to one aspect of the imprisonment experience.


This is a heavy book to read and it takes commitment to read from cover to cover. The story of the women called Rabbits by the Germans, is horrific and hard to experience.  There are no human rights for the women held captive, but the human spirit dominates and allows them to help one another in the worst of all possible situations.