Description from Goodreads:
"“Dad, you have to tell me the truth. Are you who they say you are? Because I know you can’t be. I know you can’t possibly have done what they’re saying…”
Libby Trent has worked hard to make a good life for herself. She has a happy, messy home in Virginia, full of family and laughter. And a job she’s enormously proud of at a charity helping the disadvantaged, that suits her strong sense of what’s right and wrong.
But everything changes the day she’s contacted by a government official asking questions about a man named Hans Brenner, a Nazi who escaped Germany after the Second World War. A war criminal guilty of the most heinous deeds.
And the man they suspect is Libby’s own father.
She has always known that her father was born in Germany, but what they’re saying is simply impossible. Her frail, elderly father is the sweetest man she knows. With his kind eyes, his tender care, his passion for social justice, he is the person who taught her every value she has… He can’t possibly be the evil man they are saying he was.
But the official is insistent. He says he knows Libby’s father is Hans Brenner, but he tells her they need more evidence for the trial to go ahead—even if it is just a photograph, a letter, or something her father might have kept from those days. And Libby is the one who could find it for them.
Libby knows terrible acts should never go unpunished. But she refuses to believe her father could be guilty, and so she decides to search for something that can prove his innocence. She knows she simply has to find it, because if she can’t…
Then everything she thought she knew about her father, about herself, and even about history may be changed forever."
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This is a difficult book to review and whilst I can't say I 'enjoyed' it because you can't say that reading about this subject matter is 'enjoyable', I was absolutely captivated and totally invested in the story of Libby and her father.
I am not going to provide a synopsis of this book as the description does this already but what I will say is that this is a totally engrossing story told from dual timelines - the present and the past during World War II.
It is clear that the author has done her research carefully; she weaves historical fact amongst this fictional story very successfully. It is heart-breaking and, at times, a very difficult read but not because of the way it was written more it was what was happening in the story and the dilemmas that Libby and her father faced.
If you enjoy historical fiction from this era, I would certainly recommend this but be prepared to shed a few tears!
Thank you to Bookouture and NetGalley for enabling me to read and share my thoughts of When We Were Innocent.
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