From Ellen Feldman, author of PARIS NEVER LEAVES YOU, comes THE LIVING AND THE LOST, a refreshing take on World War II set after its resolution, right in the heart of Allied-occupied Berlin.

As a worker connected to the American military, Meike “Millie” Mosbach is determined not to let any Germans forget their role in the war that killed millions of Jewish men, women and children. She works in a “denazification” office in Berlin, where she interviews German citizens and ranks them in order of zealousness to help Germany rebuild without dedicated Nazis setting the tone for their publications, including newspapers, magazines and textbooks.

As a female, Millie is an unusual candidate for the job, but she has an advantage over even the best male soldiers: she herself is a German-born Jewish woman, one who not only speaks the language, but can read the expressions, equivocations and evasions of her fellow German citizens better than an American can. But with her particular skill set comes a major drawback: she is angry, angrier than any American soldier. Having borne witness to the worst of the German atrocities, she hates Germany, past as well as present, and will turn Nazi herself before she’ll let a single German forget their role in her family’s tragedies.

"Feldman’s combination of a unique setting, meticulous research and a haunted heroine living in a morally gray moment makes it a crucial addition to any bookshelf."

Millie and her brother, David, escaped to the United States ahead of their parents and little sister, Sarah, just before Kristallnacht, when they lost contact with them. Although Millie and David were raised by kind American friends of their parents, and even received exceptional schooling, Millie in particular cannot let go of the family she left behind. She and David oscillate between relief that they survived and extreme guilt that so many others did not, and the end of the war has done little to ease their psyches. So while Millie roots out Nazis and brands them as “exonerated or non-incriminated” or “major offenders,” David works with “displaced persons” to help them rebuild and recover from the last few years of tragedy and death. But the Berlin where they now reside is bombed out, full of desperate survivors, hidden monsters and spies. While their hatred fuels them, it also leaves them susceptible to blind spots.

Millie soon finds a companion in Theo Wallach, an officer who works in her department. If Millie has a chip on her shoulder when it comes to Germans, Theo has a whole lumber yard. Though she understands and often relates to his anger, even she can see that it is tearing him apart. Meanwhile, her boss, Major Harry Sutton, seems far too forgiving of the Germans, too ready to believe that while the Nazis were a devastating force, the German citizens were left with few options other than to conform.

Torn between the two perspectives and wrapped up in her own anger, Millie is forced to reckon with some harsh truths about survival and the plight of real German citizens. But she is not the only one who has difficulty keeping her personal feelings out of her job, nor is she the only one fighting against the past. As Millie, David and the rest of the Allies make efforts to bring a broken country back from the brink, they must grapple with their own histories within the country and find a way to move forward.

Simmering in the background is Millie’s hunt for her parents and sister, who were never officially declared dead. Her mission reunites her with a beloved cousin, pulls her into a desperate search for a child, and reminds her of just how much was lost to the Nazi regime. David also has his own mysterious story, and while these plotlines help propel the narrative, I initially had trouble connecting with Millie as a character. Feldman is unflinching in depicting her anger and resentment, but for at least the first half of the book, she felt cold and inaccessible, while others, like David and Sutton, practically leapt off the page. Millie does have a satisfying character arc in the end, but I was much more invested in Berlin overall rather than in her story.

Though there is no battlefront action, Feldman gives readers a real “boots on the ground” depiction of the rubble and mayhem left over from not just the war, but also the poverty and scarcity that came with it. Whether she is describing bombed-out staircases leading to decrepit apartments, the hedonism of Berlin’s black market, or the survival instincts of those who lived through all of it, her gaze is stark, clear-eyed and unabashed.

This is a deeply felt, atmospheric book, and Feldman does a tremendous job of evoking a sense of time and place. But even more than immersing readers in her setting, she writes the emotions of the moment --- the hunger of survivors, the anger felt by German-born Jews, the anti-Semitism of even the Allied soldiers, and the survivor’s guilt of those who escaped --- with vivid, unsentimental prose. Every scene, every emotion is stark and immediate, and Feldman makes you feel like you are right there with her characters, identifying Nazis, smoking black-market cigarettes and sneaking food to survivors.

If you read only one WWII novel this year, make it THE LIVING AND THE LOST. Feldman’s combination of a unique setting, meticulous research and a haunted heroine living in a morally gray moment makes it a crucial addition to any bookshelf. She has outdone herself with this gripping, heartfelt novel, and readers will find themselves wowed by her rendering of post-war Germany and the challenges faced by those tasked with rebuilding a country bolstered by decency, civility and humanity.