#BlogTour-‘The Rabbit Girls’ by Anna Ellory

About the book…

‘The Rabbit Girls’ by Anna Ellory is published by Lake Union/Amazon Publishing and is available now in ebook, audiobook and audiobook formats. My sincere thanks to Megan from ed public relations for the blogtour invite and my gifted paperback review copy.

Berlin, 1989. As the wall between East and West falls, Miriam Winter cares for her dying father, Henryk. When he cries out for someone named Frieda – and Miriam discovers an Auschwitz tattoo hidden under his watch strap – Henryk’s secret history begins to unravel.

Searching for more clues of her father’s past, Miriam finds an inmate uniform from the Ravensbrück women’s camp concealed among her mother’s things. Within its seams are dozens of letters to Henryk written by Frieda. The letters reveal the disturbing truth about the ‘Rabbit Girls’, young women experimented on at the camp.

And amid their tales of sacrifice and endurance, Miriam pieces together a love story that has been hidden away in Henryk’s heart for almost fifty years.

Inspired by these extraordinary women, Miriam strives to break through the walls she has built around herself. Because even in the darkest of times, hope can survive.

Switching narratives between Henryk,cared for by his daughter Miriam, now at the end of his life, and him as a teacher in Berlin during the war shows a unique persepctive into the long lasting effects of the Nazi regime. The notions and concepts of freedom , how it feels to be trapped, then and now, plus the secrets which families keep so close to them are intimately explored in short, sharp chapters, which slowly build the cross generational story of the past. In doing so , we , the reader can understand how it ripples and effects the individual, and wider society, in modern times.

”She has never thought to ask him about his life before her.Hitler killed Jews and her parents weren’t Jewish.She has never thought about it any more than that.History,as horrific as it was,has never been this close to home.”

In one fell swoop, Anna Ellory has nailed exactly why and how it is so important to not forget what happened in the Holocaust. We do not retread the past in order to make money from it, we do it to remember the pain, the horror, the loss of life in the hope that it will never happen again. And as we see ont he news, people derided and seperated as ‘other’ in the U.S, being segregated and imprisoned purrely for the crime of being born elsewhere. We see people in the UK who have lived here, set up families and links here, worked here, suddenly being sent back home. And we feel the cold grasp of history reaching out again, warning us.

‘The Rabbit Girls’ is an astonishing debut, written with a clear eye, there is Miriam, discovering the secrets of her father’s past just as he is about to die. And she herself is escaping abuse, at the same time the Berlin Wall is being brought down, an hostoric and unforgettable event that signified a beginning to an end of suspicion,hostility and death.

It is about taking the time to understand the ones you love whilst they are here to talk to and learn from. Because we cannot take the future for granted. The name which Henryk cries out as he is lying on the verge of death, Frieda, is the catalyst for Miriam to go into the past and find out who this woman was and what she meant to her father.

As she cares for him, she sees for the first time the tattooed numbers under his watch which she had never noticed before.

If there was one niggle I would have, it is about the tattoo. I found it hard to believe that in all her life, Miriam had never seen this before, however, it a tiny thing. I think if someone was determined to hide this, then they could, maybe it signifies just how poorly Henryk is that his secret, which he kept for so long, is finally revealed.

And I am so glad that it was because in finding this, it spurs Miriam not only to protect her fragile sense of self as a person who has made the brave decision to extricate herself from her abusive husband.Her investigation into the Rabbit Girls of Ravensbruck and what lengths these women went to to stay alive.

Heartbreaking whilst being heartwarming, this is as much about breaking down mental walls as the physical one that is seperating Berlin.

About the author…

Anna Ellory is a former children’s nurse from Bath. She completed an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University, where she was mentored by author Fay Weldon.

Anna was inspired to write The Rabbit Girls as a way of shining a light on the rarely told experiences of women and children during the Holocaust.

It has sold in over 10 territories worldwide so far.

Links-https://www.writers-online.co.uk/how-to-write/creative-writing/ten-ways-to-find-time-every-day-for-writing

Twitter @AnnaEllory

@ed_pr