An ambitious debut by Canadian author Joanne Kormylo.
The daughter of the title is Anna, a younger sibling in Nazi-controlled Poland whose father and brother are both involved in smuggling weapons, aiding Allied spies, and otherwise thwarting the regime. Anna is deliberately kept out of things until the younger neighbour girl she walks to school is taken by the Nazis because of her Aryan good looks. That loss sets Anna off on her own type of underground war work, trying to recover and smuggle out stolen children.
After circumstance introduces her to Johnny, an allied airman, the plot unfolds with plenty of realistic wartime and camp details. The depth of research is evident, and the author‘s personal connection – her father was a prisoner of war – infuses the writing with passion and focus. Anna’s family members and Johnny’s friends are used to illustrate different aspects of daily life during the war, and the conflict's impact on different populations. Mistakes and vengeance by both the Nazis and Russians, and by citizens of the liberated nations as they struggle to find normality, are all touched on in the war’s aftermath.
For all the political issues and the inevitable disasters of sorting and repatriating millions of displaced people while holding accountable those who committed the worst atrocities, the focus remains firmly on our two lead characters, Anna and Johnny. Their bond, forged early in the war, survives past its end and acts as the continuing thread of this love story set against the vast canvas of World War II that has the power to expose a whole new generation to the horrors of unbridled warfare and the triumph of the human spirit.
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