Counting Lost Stars by Kim Van Alkemade (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

 

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @williammorrowbooks for the review copy of Counting Lost Stars by Kim Van Alkemade.

What job in the past would you like to learn more about?  I enjoyed learning about punch card operators in Counting Lost Stars.  I didn’t realize that punch cards were used in WWII to categorize people.  It was an unfortunate use of a new technology. 

Rita Klein is a college student going into her senior year at Barnard in 1960.  She has just taken a summer class on computer programming that has gotten her excited about her future.  After she becomes pregnant, her parents send her to a Home for Unwed Mothers where she is forced to give away her baby.  Afterwards, she is unable to return to Barnard and takes a job with her programming skills at a firm located in the Empire State Building.  There she meets a tour guide named Jacob.  They grow close, but both of them harbor dark secrets.  Jacob is a Dutch Jew who survived the holocaust and is tormented by the fact that he could never find his family.  Will Rita be able to resolve her own troubles and to help Jacob?

Cornelia Vogel works as a punch card operator with her father at the Ministry of Information in 1941 in the Netherlands.  She slowly realizes that the census that they are working on is being used to find and categorize the Jewish citizens.  She gets to know her neighbor, Leah Blom, who teaches her English.  As she grows closer to Leah, she realizes that she loves her.  She also realizes she has to help her escape.  Will she be able to help Leah?

I really enjoyed this novel and couldn’t put it down at my kids’ soccer tournament this past weekend (don’t worry, I only read it between the games).  I liked both stories, but I kept wondering how they were related.  I liked how both stories came together perfectly at the end.  I like how the story showed that you could make choices that would make a difference to other people and your own lives.

I always love stories with a technical angle, and I loved learning about punch card operators and basic coding in the 1940’s and 1960’s.  It was considered a female job in those days.

I felt very bad for Rita.  It seems terrible to me that you were pressured into giving up your baby when you were an unwed mother.   I’m glad that has changed in the present day.

Cornelia and Leah are unconventional women who have a same-sex relationship in the 1940’s.  It would have not only been scandalous at the time, but also could have been deadly as homosexuals were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in the Nazi regime.  Alkemade does an excellent job of bringing the characters to life and making me care about them.  She also does an excellent job of making me care both about Rita and Jacob’s budding romance as well as Cornelia and Leah’s relationship.  I was vested in both of their stories.

The concentration camps and WWII experiences were harrowing and sad to read. Author Kim Van Alkemade does an excellent job of bringing the WWII experience to life and also creating great settings for both the 1940’s and 1960’s eras.  They were two distinct and different time periods.

Favorite Quote:  “Our secrets do us no good if we end up buried beneath the weight of them.”

I highly recommend this book to all historical fiction lovers.

Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade

After a family tragedy, four-year old Rachel Rabinowitz is placed in the Hebrew Infant Home and separated from her beloved six-year old brother Sam in New York City in 1919.  Once there, Rachel is placed in isolation as she tries to recover from a variety of illnesses.  She also becomes part of a study using x-rays, hence orphan number eight, by young Dr. Mildred Solomon.  This study causes Rachel to lose her hair and also to contract cancer later in life.  In the 1950’s, a grown up Rachel is a nurse working in the hospice wing of the Old Hebrews Home when she discovers that Dr. Mildred Solomon is her patient.  Rachel is torn by her feelings, should she seek vengeance on one who caused such harm to an innocent child?

The novel flips between the two timelines where you learn the story of young Rachel and what life was like growing up in the Hebrew Infant Home and the angst of 1950’s Rachel learning what exactly Dr. Solomon did to her in the experiments and what morally she should do in return to Dr. Solomon.  There is also a love story where young Rachel starts to have burgeoning feelings for another girl and it leads you to wonder if she is with the same woman.  The novel discusses the feelings of isolation being in a homosexual relationship in the 1950’s.

My favorite part of the novel was definitely the past story line with Rachel growing up in the orphanage.  I loved the detail, and was fascinated by life both in the Orphanage and out West when Rachel was older.  What made the novel even better was that the author included her inspirations in the end of the book and a lot of the novel was true and parts were her own family history.  It was fascinating.  I also enjoyed all of the characters.

The weaker part of the novel was the 1950’s story.  I felt like there was great suspense at first, but then the storyline drifted in focus to more Rachel’s love life rather than the interaction between Rachel and Dr. Solomon. I think a novel of living life as a homosexual American during a repressed 1950’s society would be fascinating, but I didn’t think that was the main part of this story.  It seemed like plot drift.

Overall Orphan Number Eight is a very interesting and original historical fiction suspense novel.

Book Source:  Review Copy from William Morrow – Thanks!