The Dutch Wife

By: Ellen Keith

Narrated by: Abby Craden, Eric Martin, Charlie Thurston

Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

In the best-selling tradition of The Nightingale and Lilac Girls comes a sweeping story of love and survival during World War II.

Amsterdam, May 1943. As the tulips bloom and the Nazis tighten their grip across the city, the last signs of Dutch resistance are being swept away. Marijke de Graaf and her husband are arrested and deported to different concentration camps in Germany. Marijke is given a terrible choice: to suffer a slow death in the labor camp or - for a chance at survival - to join the camp brothel.

On the other side of the barbed wire, SS Officer Karl Müller arrives at the camp hoping to live up to his father’s expectations of wartime glory. When he encounters the newly arrived Marijke, this meeting changes their lives forever.

Woven into the narrative across space and time is Luciano Wagner’s ordeal in 1977 Buenos Aires, during the heat of the Argentine Dirty War. In his struggle to endure military captivity, he searches for ways to resist from a prison cell he may never leave.

From the Netherlands to Germany to Argentina, The Dutch Wife is a novel about the blurred lines between love and lust, abuse and resistance, and right and wrong. It is a harrowing and ultimately redemptive story about the capacity of ordinary people to persevere under extraordinary circumstances.

©2018 Ellen Keith (P)2018 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

A different story

This is a book is a lot to take in. Other people will say it’s too sexual and is too boring and not realistic. I think it was good. It was a different story we don’t hear about and all the stories fit together after you put the pieces together. I wouldn’t spend another credit on the book or listen to it again, but I work recommend it to a friend.

The book does get a little tedious but I promise it gets better

Not the Best

While the context in which the story takes place is horrifying and addressees many of the atrocities and complexities that occurred in Nazi camps, the book doesn’t quite get there in developing the characters complexity. I found it hard to identify with either of the main characters in the way in which I think the author was trying to portray them. There is also some graphic content that although important for communicating the atrocities of what happened, I found often out of place.

Reading of female protagonists voice was difficult to understand.

Sad but

Saddest book I’ve read but I had to finish it. You should give it a try.

Different viewpoints

Different experiences of WW2 and beyond. It was an interesting read, rated R material. Recommend

needs more storyline, less brothel raunchiness

The book was almost too wrapped up in dirty details of the brothel. I would have liked the story and characters to build a bit more.

It had promise....

Anticlimactic ending - nothing was finished. Started out strong, then it seems like there was a rush to complete the novel. OK

Horrid Ending…time waster

Crosses between 1940’s and 1970’s. The two stories don’t really relate or have much of anything to do with each other. What the heck kinda ending was that. Very anticlimactic and overall just something to pass the time. If you’re wanting an intriguing story, this isn’t for you. Wouldn’t recommend.

Sobering

The ethics of this book are very sobering. I can’t imagine being in the situations the characters face and the effects their choices had on the future. Very well written.

You will not put it down

While this is a serious story about a dark period of history, I feel like I know a great deal more about how people survived. Here is a very interesting sub-story going on here which I will not spoil, but let me just say it has a dramatic ending you don't see coming... I really enjoyed this one...

Carl

Good read, was hoping it would end differently. But the interesting information on what happened