Emma recommends... May Book Club | Once the Deed is Done - Rachel Seiffert

Get in touch to sign-up for our May book club with author Rachel Seiffert! - Wednesday 27 May, 7.30pm

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Emma recommends... As the fighting of the Second World War draws to an end and the Nazi regime disintegrates across Europe, this novel zooms us into one small town in Northern Germany and plays these months out through a series of parallel narratives. The main focus is on the people who have been displaced, forced to work as labourers in farms and factories across the German-occupied territories, and how they might be returned home, go on to live elsewhere, trace their families. Expertly braiding the different stories together, and deftly exploring blame, complicity, and the fundamentals of humanity in the face of brutality, this is an excellent and thought-provoking read.

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To be truly alive means having to make choices. To be truly alive is also, quite simply, to love.

Northern Germany, 1945. Dead of night and dead of winter, a boy hears soldiers and sees strangers - forced labourers - fleeing across the heathland by his small town: shawls and skirts in the snowfall. The end days are close, war brings risk and chance, and Benno is witness to something he barely understands. Peace brings more soldiers - but English this time - and Red Cross staff officers.

Ruth, on her first posting from London, is given charge of a refugee camp on the heathland, crowded with former forced labourers. As ever more keep arriving, she hears whispers, rumours of dark secrets about that snowy night. The townspeople close ranks, shutting their mouths and minds to the winter's events, but the town children are curious about the refugees on their doorstep, and Benno can't carry his secret alone.