In Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke, Hannah Stirling's mother has just passed away. More than mourning her mother, she mourns the loss of what could have been. Hannah's mother had been distant from Hannah and her father for as long as she could remember.
Going through her parents' home for some clue about her mother's past turns out to be fruitless. When she sees the lawyer to finalize her mother's affairs, Hannah is surprised to be given a key to a safe deposit box that Hannah had never known about. But all she finds there is her parents' wedding certificate, her father's military discharge papers, and a few empty envelopes with German addresses and stamps on them.
The paperwork, however, lets her know a shocking surprise: the man she called Daddy all her life could not have been her real father.
The point of view switches to thirty years earlier in Germany, when Hannah's mother, Lieselotte Sommer, was a teenager just before Kristallnacht. Her mother lay dying, her brother was a whole-hearted member of the Hitler Youth, and her father was a rising member of the Nazi party. Lieselotte had loved her brother's friend, Lukas Kirchmann, for as long as she could remember. She helps him and his family help Jews with food, false papers, and anything else they can. She longs for the day they can marry.
But Lieselotte's father puts pressure on her to marry a Nazi officer and raise Aryan children for the Fuhrer. Her father has been distracted, but she never guessed the depths he would go to to further his own ends.
Switching back to Hannah again, her lawyer researches the German addresses on the envelopes in her mother's safe deposit box. He discovers that she has a grandfather she never knew about. Her mother, Lieselotte, had said she was from Austria and her family all died in the war.
Hannah travels to Germany to meet her grandfather, to try to find out more about her mother, and to discover who her father was. At first she enjoys the connection with her grandfather. But her research uncovers horrifying family secrets.
This book was riveting. I listened to the audiobook, free at the time from Audible's Plus Catalog, and eventually began looking for extra time to listen more. All the characters, including side characters, are well-developed and the plot. There's so much more I'd love to say, but I don't want to spoil anything for potential readers. So I'll just say it's a really good book and highly recommended.
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