In 1946, war widow Emmy is in Frankfurt working on a project to return books that had been confiscated by Nazis to their rightful owners (and barring that, find a place to preserve them in the Library of Congress) when she discovers a volume of Rilke's poetry with an inscription that immediately draws her in: "To Annelise, my Edelweiss Pirate."
In 1938, 18-year-old Annelise is part of the Edelwess Pirates, an outdoorsy group that has morphed into an organized resistance to the growing powers of the Nazis, when she falls in love with Eitan, a Jewish factory worker in her hometown of Bonn. But their love, and Eitan's safety, is in jeopardy thanks to Annelise's sister, who is a rule-following, uniformed member of the League of German Girls (the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth for boys).
In 1943, the aforementioned sister, Christina, has a cushy job in the Nazi intelligence-gathering department in Berlin when she learns that, despite being married to a gentile, Eitan has been captured and is headed for a concentration camp, unless she intervenes.
The stories of these three women interweave throughout the book, unfolding a story of resistance and self-awareness. It's rare to find a book that features German resistance to the Nazis on an organized scale — usually it's just one person or family or neighborhood, or the organized resistance is from the Allied Forces — and it was so refreshing to see a new take on what's become an oversaturated era in historical fiction, doubly so because the story is so well told. I absolutely loved this one, and will be recommending it widely.
*This book will be published March 19.
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