The Last Year of The War by Susan Meisnner

 

Publisher: Berkley

Publication date: March 19th 2019

Pages: 389

The book starts and we get to meet Elise, who is now eldery and is diagnosed with dementia. One of her last wishes before her memory is getting worse is seeing her childhood friend Mariko again. She finds out if she is still alive and travels to San Francisco where she meets Mariko's daughter who is the manager of the hotel she is staying in. She tells her that Mariko doesn't have to live long anymore because she had a severe stroke, but Elise is just right on time to see Mariko again and talk about their past, where they met when they where teens..

Life is just normal for fourteen year old Elise Sontag, daughter from German parents living in the USA in 1943. World War II is going in in Europe, it feels far away but they feel very aware of it. Everything changes in her life when her father, who has been an American resident for two decades is arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer, and shortly after, their family is sent to an  internment camp in Texas, where German and Japanese people, seen as state enemies, are being interned together, in barracks behindbarbed wire, watched by guards. Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. She meets a new friend though, Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences and they dream of what they will become when the war is over. But the pressure from their families is too much to survive their friendship at the end and after the war, and they will not see or hear from each other again until they final meetup when Mariko is almost passing away..

This is not a very light and happy read, but as you read the synopsis before hand, that's also not to be expected, so if you are looking for that type of book, this might not be your choice. If you are in though for a serious, beautiful written book with a deep story line, this might be the book for you. I found the storyline and main characters interesting. Elise is the main focus of the book and it was interesting and different to. She brought an interesting perspective as someone who has lived her whole life as an American and yet she and her family were treated like the enemy and eventually sent to live in Germany. When the story moved to Germany it brought with it even more tension as you knew from history the war was coming to a close but yet was still bringing destruction.

A lot of sad tragic events happening, especially when the family moves back to Germany, where they also don't feel at home, and the author kept the storyline thrilling and moving until the end, which was also a good conclusion to the book.