Moving History

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While to some, it seems like World War II has been covered extensively, but as The Nine shows, there are always more stories to tell and more to learn about the atrocities of the war. This was the moving story of women resistance fighters who were imprisoned by the Nazis, then made a dangerous escape when forced on a death march at the end of the war. Author Gwen Strauss did an incredible job researching each of the women, and weaving together a riveting story about their imprisonment and escape. There is some creative license taken in terms of conversations and minor details, but those details are based on the extensive research into the women involved and conversations with their families, and add so much emotion and context to this otherwise true story. Imprisonment of female resistance fighters was an area of WWII history with which I was not very familiar, and Strauss brought these stories to life in a way that was engaging and with obvious care. My only minor issue is that there were times additional information about the camps or other prisoners was included - while very interesting and important to the overall history - it took me out of the story about our main nine and I would have to flip back to remember where the women were in their journey. Clearly Strauss went above and beyond in her research and I cannot fault her for wanting to include everything that she found, just be aware as a reader that this is a book you need to pay close attention to and cannot passively read. This is an important story that I strongly recommend anyone pick up!