The Star and the Shamrock by Jean Grainger - a final WWII novel for the year

In the first book of this WWII trilogy, a desperate mother in 1939 Berlin sends her children to what she hopes is safety in Britain. Ariella Bannon is a German Jew, married to Peter, a Catholic who was arrested five months ago for defending an old lady from Nazi thugs. She is afraid her husband is dead and is worried for her children: Liesl (10) and Erich (7). There is a chance to get them out of Berlin: a humanitarian effort, Kindertransport, is rescuing children from Nazi-controlled territory and bringing them to Britain. 

Fearful of the children being separated or mistreated, Ariella writes to a cousin Peter never met in Northern Ireland, begging her to take the children.

Elizabeth Klein has been living in Liverpool since she left home to train as a teacher and barely knew she had a cousin in Berlin. She had been estranged from her family since marrying a Jew, who died in the Great War. When Ariella’s letter is forwarded to her, Elizabeth is nervous about taking on the responsibility of two children but does not hesitate. The children are shy and frightened but had learned English from their mother, which helps them adjust, and Elizabeth finds that they bring the affection into her life that she has missed since her husband and father died. But just as they begin to feel settled, Liverpool is bombed and her house destroyed.

Although Elizabeth never planned to return to Ballycreggan, she and the children have nowhere else to go other than her childhood home in County Down, empty since her mother’s death. Something that helps the children, now terrified that Hitler will invade, is a nearby refugee camp for German Jews. Children their age have just arrived, along with handsome Daniel Lieber, a refugee who has learned how to fix every half-functioning piece of machinery. The community has mixed feelings about all these newcomers but Elizabeth is asked to teach all the refugee children, which brings her closer to Daniel. She never thought about another man after her husband died but the friendship of this kind and intense man touches something in her, already awakened by becoming a foster mother. But just as it seems there is the possibility of more, Daniel is arrested on suspicion of passing information on an RAF base to the Germans and Elizabeth is warned not to jeopardize her own position by maintaining contact with him. Is he guilty? Does Elizabeth know him well enough to trust in his innocence? Should she jeopardize the tentative acceptance she and the children have received at Ballycreggan by trying to defend him?

Some people know how fascinated I am by evacuation stories and I appreciated the recommendation of this historical novel, which is very different from most WWII fiction, both in terms of setting and plot. It is a relatively simple and at times predictable story, despite the ongoing threat of bombs and the children’s fear for their parents back in Germany, but is about more than the growing relationship between Elizabeth and her young cousins. It’s also the depiction of a community wary of outsiders but which manages to put aside suspicions to work together when Ballycreggan is bombed. Whether a Catholic priest and Protestant minister would have welcomed help from a Rabbi and whether a refugee camp would have had anything to offer in a crisis is uncertain but it make a good story. And, in the background, we wonder if Ariella will survive Nazi Germany and break Elizabeth’s heart by reclaiming her children.

Grainger is an Irish author who was inspired to write this book after seeing a commemorative statue of the Kindertransport. I appreciated the unusual setting and preferred it to another historical novel I recently read that was set in Ireland, Time of the Child. That was better and more lyrically written but I thought it took too long for anything significant to happen! This is my twenty-second book and the last of the year for Marg's Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Happy New Year!

Title: The Star and the Shamrock
Author: Jean Grainger
Publication: Paperback, 2019
Genre: Historical Fiction/series
Source: Library