Book Re­view: The Nightin­gale by Kristin Han­nah

The Holo­caust, al­though it oc­curred about 75 years ago, still pen­e­trates mod­ern Amer­i­can me­dia to­day. With books like Num­ber the Stars by Lois Lowry and The Boy in the Striped Pa­ja­mas by John Boyne, the lat­ter which re­ceived a movie adap­tion, writ­ers are us­ing the hor­rors of the past to re­mind to­day's read­ers to build a bet­ter world for the next gen­er­a­tion. The Nightin­gale by Kristin Han­nah is a rel­a­tively newer book join­ing the Holo­caust his­tor­i­cal fic­tion canon, and Han­nah's writ­ing tells de­tails of the dev­as­tat­ing story con­tain­ing two very dif­fer­ent sis­ters at­tempt­ing to fight against the Nazi oc­cu­pa­tion in their own ways.  

Vianne is the el­dest of the two sis­ters and is al­ready both a wife and a mother when France is in­vaded. With her hus­band gone fight­ing in the army, she's left at home with her young daugh­ter and her teenage sis­ter, Is­abelle. Is­abelle leaves the home­stead to work as a spy for the Re­sis­tance, and the worlds of both sis­ters are thrown into chaos.  

One thing read­ers can look for­ward to see­ing in Kristin Han­nah's novel is his­tor­i­cal ac­cu­racy. Al­though some his­tor­i­cal fic­tion au­thors take cre­ative lib­er­ties with time­lines or cer­tain events, Han­nah weaves her story around the threads al­ready set in place by time. This ap­pro­pri­ately adds an­other layer of heart-wrench­ing drama as read­ers con­tend with the fact that al­though Vianne and Is­abelle are made-up char­ac­ters, the blood­shed in 1940s France was an ab­hor­rent re­al­ity.