This was an amazing story of nine women who survived World War II in a German concentration camp and escaped during a death march as the war was ending and made their way home. The most inspiring aspect of the story was the ways in which these women and the others with them in the camp formed strong bonds and community to help sustain them through unimaginable brutality in the camp and hardship on their journey after escaping. Strauss did an amazing job of interweaving the women's stories (including her own aunt who was one of the nine) as they worked with the French Resistance and then were captured, tortured, sent to the camp, and finally made their way home after escaping during the death march. While it is a non-fiction book the story is told so powerfully that you drawn in as if it were a novel. Much of Strauss's research to flesh out the story of the nine women involved talking with the families of the nine and the stories from the later generations did a good job of illustrating the inter-generational trauma of these families and how many of the survivors of this horrific time in history buried the stories in attempts to continue on with their lives which was not always a successful strategy.