Skeletons at the feast : a novel / by Chris Bohjalian

Based on a real-life World War II diary, Bohjalian's (The Double Bind) 12th novel chronicles the last days of the Nazi regime through the eyes of an unlikely threesome. Anna Emmerich, an 18-year-old Prussian aristocrat, along with her mother and younger brother, is making a desperate attempt to journey west across the Reich out of the path of the advancing Red Army. Callum Finnella, Anna's lover and a Scottish POW who worked on the Emmerich family estate, is also traveling with the family. Uri Singer, a German Jew who escaped from a train bound for Auschwitz, is ironically the group's guardian as they travel through Germany. The novel is immensely readable, but the characters--the Jewish escapee, the heroic Allied soldier, and the beautiful Prussian aristocrat--seem more like archetypes than individuals. However, Bohjalian takes a fresh perspective and details the brutal realities of World War II in a novel that for once does not focus entirely on the Allies.