
The Women in the Castle
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Campbell
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By:
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Jessica Shattuck
Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined - an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times notable book The Hazards of Good Breeding.
Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany's defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband's ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband's brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.
First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin's mother, the beautiful and naive Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resister's wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.
As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband's resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war - each with her own unique share of challenges.
Written with the devastating emotional power of The Nightingale, Sarah's Key, and The Light Between Oceans, Jessica Shattuck's evocative and utterly enthralling novel offers a fresh perspective on one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Combining piercing social insight and vivid historical atmosphere, The Women in the Castle is a dramatic yet nuanced portrait of war and its repercussions that explores what it means to survive, love, and ultimately forgive in the wake of unimaginable hardship.
©2017 Jessica Shattuck (P)2017 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...




















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Would you try another book from Jessica Shattuck and/or Cassandra Campbell?
I was looking forward to this book, but the title is misleading. There was very little about the time the women spent in the castle or its relevance. There was a lack of background or facts to understand why the lead character Marianne was so attached to her childhood friend's child and not her own. She seemed to think only about her childhood friend and not her own husband. There also lacked information about a stolen identity and how exactly that happened; or about how Marianne found the two other women or one of the other women's child post WWII. Even when the ending claimed Marianne was a hero of The Resistance it was without any earlier facts in the book to support the claim. Such information would have made for a better historical novel. The book, however, did get me to think about how to deal with people after such a tragedy, especially when that tragedy bent so many minds in an evil way and caused people to commit horrible acts.Disappointing lack of detail.
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Could have been better
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wonderful look at post war Germany
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good story, poor narration
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Excellent historical novel
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loved the story. Narrator did a spectacular job.
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Wonderful
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Bouncing time line
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Any additional comments?
This book was great. I loved everything about it. The story, the narration...EVERYTHING! Get this book!!!Wonderful. Just Wonderful.
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didn't want to stop.
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