The Sixth Lamentation
by William Brodrick
The Sixth Lamentation, published
July 26, 2004, was the
August selection for my Seasoned Readers Book Club. I read that
the author, William Brodrick, was
a Franciscan friar before leaving the order to become a
practicing barrister. His character in the story, Father
Anselm, has done just the opposite and serves as the narrator as
such, going back and forth between the telling of the history
and current trial and lives of the present generation. He weaves
the church’s involvement into the Nazi war crimes suspects lives
as they seek sanctuary in his Suffolk priory and learns they had
been housed directly after the war as they escaped and assumed
new identities to avoid prosecution.
The
author notes his own family history that inspired the story
including his mother’s attempt to smuggle an infant during the
war, her arrest by the Gestapo and ultimate death from motor
neurone disease in 1989. As a history laden thriller full of
twists, turns, moving through time between occupied France and
modern day England, it keeps you glued to what comes next.
The
heroine Agnes Aubret writes her history in a simple notebook,
knowing her life will end with terminal motor neuron disease,
and wanting her granddaughter Lucy to know the stories she can
not speak of aloud. Lucy, reads about her grandmother’s past in
Occupied Paris as a member of a resistance group that smuggled
Jewish Children to safety. Her story takes on a new life as
Schwermann, a Nazi criminal is brought to trial all these many
years later in London.
Father Anselm researches the heroic French resistance fighters
of the Round Table, a group of students who attempted to rescue
thousands of Jewish children. He weaves a story together that is
never quite what it seems on the surface. Friends turned
collaborators, babies adopted by conspirators, confusion over
who died in death camps and who survived add up to an unfolding
story filled with intrigue.
Brodrick writes well with a touch of prose to enhance the mood
and bring this tragic story of tremendous loss of so many during
the war to a bittersweet climax that brought tears and
heartwarming satisfaction.
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