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While the story is interesting, it's just a bit challenging to read.

The girl in the bog now knows the circumstances she faces. Essentially, the old Irish folklore from her original life has followed her since she was dug out of the bog.

It seems there's more than just the girl in the bog showing up from the past.

Despite being really old, it seems someone from way back when is looking for the girl from the blog. And maybe the girl doesn't want to be found.

There are the finders pair and the trio of of Red Witches of the West. Plus an archaeologist whose role is tbd.

I think I have just read the most amazing paragraph-long description of a person/character ever. It's actually so good I wish I could quote it here, but there's a character limitation, so it won't fit (p. 82).

As I began reading the book, I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy it. It's grown on me and seems to have developed into its own. But this one paragraph is so well done that it feels like it's made the book for me.

She may be centuries old and preserved by the bog. An archeologist is coming to see, but the body's been moved. And the 3 Ginger Sisters are also looking for her.

This is a library after-hours book club selection. It's too early for me to have an opinion. I think, however, we have met the girl in the bog.

From early on, I've had a kind of "Forrest Gump" feel about the book. Mark Twain's characters. A minstrel show. Now, apparently, the Civil War has started. And a plot twist that's both a bit much and totally plausible at the same time.

I didn't realize "Jim Crow" comes from 1820s-ish minstrel shows nor that it's actually stolen from a slave song. Everett weaves this into the story with a traveling minstrels buying Jim for his tenor voice. Then blackface.

Meantime, story arc is treading between slave states & "free" states, while noting runaway slaves weren't free in "free" states.

Seems to give a perspective of views in the era, foreign to today.

Well, the story's certainly had some interesting twists.

Jim & Huck get separated; then happen to come back together. Parts of the story seem a little too convenient. Tho there haven't been any real famous people, somehow the story has a bit of a Forrest Gump feel.

However, I must say I like a couple lines:
"...the tidiness of lies..." regarding how people justify things, and
"I chose the word enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim."

Well, Jim is a slave who runs away to avoid being sold, without his family. Huck find him on an island they end up going downriver together.

It reads nicely and the chapters are short. But I'm not sure I'm fond of the fanfiction nature of the book. Though it does give a personal flavor to a slave's experience, I suspect it's not the only book to do so. At least it's an undercurrent and not too heavy-handed.

It’s a Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Jim story.

Here's an aspect most rarely think about following this WW2: "twelve to thirteen million Germans who were forcefully expelled from...the east". Granted, some had taken advantage of Lebensraum policies, but some families had been there for generations. Some of refugees ended up in Berchtesgaden and Irmgard, through the church, made an effort to help them despite lacking resources.

Granted author was but 11 at war's end, so viewpoint is that of a child. It's still surprising Berchtesgaden was apparently not fanatically Nazi. Inundated by the Nazi elite, yet also somewhat isolated from its worst philosophies.

Tho her parents supported Hitler, her mom scolded her for teasing Jewish kids, rare in the region. She joined but stopped attending BDM out of boredom. Is this "I wasn't really a Nazi?"

I’ve already read this one but it’s what I brought on this trip.

After blowing up the cistern (a bit implausible), Henderson and his man set out and then encountered another tribe, the hospitableness of which is still tbd.

So, he's gone to Africa & hiked to a distant tribal village. They seem welcoming & he seems to feel they can help him get over himself. But there's a drought & their cistern is inhabited by frogs they seem unwilling to deal with.

He seems to have lucked out into "fitting in" socially despite himself. Not sure if that will hold if he does something with the frogs, which he intends.

& I'm still not sure of the point.

Maybe it's character development, but it doesn't seem like this book has gone anywhere. We've got the main character and his two wives with a bit of depth, but nothing else, really.

Frankly, I've considered setting it aside, but I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt.

It's disturbing to learn Russian soldiers "systematically" raped pretty much all women, including Ravensbrück survivors. It's ironic the prisoners didn't need to fear rape from their German captors, who treated them as less than human otherwise. Only to find liberation brought about new and even more degrading horrors. Also, the Russian Army women had to contend with being treated as collaborators for being captured.

All thru the war the ICRC was aware of the concentration camps, many atrocities, and likely even the death camps, yet did nothing. Suddenly in the last 4 months or so of the war, they worked to get some prisoners released (in exchanges). Likely because the neutral Swedes were showing the Swiss up in rescuing camp prisoners.

Revensbrück has a gas chamber as of late 1944/early 1945. Even as the war is winding to its inevitable conclusion, the Nazis have become more fanatical. The only difference is rather than murdering on the basis of race, they're murdering those who can't work as slave laborers.

I think I will never understand the shear magnitude of the concentration camps and the logistics required for them.

As much as I try to assign some logic to it all, the challenge is logic didn't really apply. At the same time there were strict rules, so much happened as the result of arbitrary decisions. And the prisoner hierarchy played as much of a role as the Germans.

This is fundamentally how it all was allowed to happen. Civilian manager at Ravensbrück Siemens camp said to a prisoner worker, "'But you have all done something wrong, haven't you'...as if that justified it to him....But he was not a bad man." Ordinary Men similarly describes how evil triumphed because regular people let it.

As Germany's situation disintegrated, discipline failed; abuse became even worse.

The book makes clear slave labor at concentration camps was a key element in the war effort, especially as the situation became more dire for Germany. But I still don't comprehend how increasing transports of prisoners and the allocation of limited transport for this could even be a net positive for the Nazis in the war effort. It seems the more the world was imploding for them, the more focused they became on this.