I just finished up listening to the audio book The Silver Music Box by Mina Baites. I will admit, I initially grabbed the book by looking at the cover. I ended up putting the book in my Audible cart because I read the overview of the book.
This book starts out in Germany during WWI, moves through WWII and then 25 years beyond that comes to the the finish telling the story of three generations and their connection to the silver music box. One of the reasons I so love historical fiction is highlighted in this story. Of course I knew that WWI happened and WWII….but history books didn’t give the real life connections of how closely they happened and how that closeness comes to play in a real life family. History books are dates and facts….historical books be in fiction or not, tell us how history played out in real families. That’s the history that I most want to hear and know.
Here’s what Amazon had to say:“1914. For Paul, with love. Jewish silversmith Johann Blumenthal engraved those words on his most exquisite creation, a singing filigree bird inside a tiny ornamented box. He crafted this treasure for his young son before leaving to fight in a terrible war to honor his beloved country—a country that would soon turn against his own family.
A half century later, Londoner Lilian Morrison inherits the box after the death of her parents. Though the silver is tarnished and dented, this much-loved treasure is also a link to an astonishing past. With the keepsake is a letter from Lilian’s mother, telling her daughter for the first time that she was adopted. Too young to remember, Lilian was rescued from a Germany in the grips of the Holocaust. Now only she can trace what happened to a family who scattered to the reaches of the world, a family forced to choose between their heritage and their dreams for the future.”
Amazon readers give the book 4.5 stars. I guess I am going to say 4.2. Although good the transitions of the story moving from generation to generation were a little rough. It is still a good book though.
This sounds like a good book. I so love stories centered around those WWII years as I was a little girl, born during the Great Depression, but I remember so vividly the war years living in a small town in Oregon. I remember listening to Gabriel Heater coming over the airwaves each evening as my mom and I huddled around the round-topped wooden radio, anxiously listening to the news of the day. My father was away at war. I also remember when peace was declared and my mom and I walked downtown to see the neon lights shine once again in out little town.