Hope in the Face of Uncertainty
I loved The Brunswick by Callie Murray, read it in two days, and found it fully immersive. It’s hard to believe it’s a debut novel, as the narrative weaves seamlessly between a community in Georgia surrounding a hotel that has seen busier days, a daughter’s determination to keep it afloat, a father who built the hotel catering to his wife’s needs, and when she rejects their relationship through abandonment, he checks out, depressed, sleeping his life away, refusing to engage with anyone including family. There are rising issues related to Germans fleeing their country as the Third Reich amasses power, and desperate families attempt to send German children far from the murderous aspects of the ongoing Holocaust. The storyline itself is based upon an actual child transport of 50 children out of the Nazi regime and into the United States (Pennsylvania in real life, but into a small town in Georgia during 1939 in this book). There is a documentary “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of ...