This book randomly jumped out at me from a library bookshelf so I decided to give it a chance. In reading the cover, I found out that it was written by a local author and that it is historical fiction about a woman who joined a group of German women that answer ads in the newspaper for women wanted in Iceland to help with farm work (and probably marry the farmer) after WWII. Interesting.

Charlotte arrives in Iceland broken. She had married a Jewish artist just before WWII began and he was taken to a concentration camp and assumed dead. She hid her half-Jewish daughter in a willing convent that was raided during the war and lost track of her. She assumes she is also dead, but a sliver of hope gives her no peace. In Iceland, she finds a stoic, silent farmer and his wise mother. She embraces the way of life and the myths of the land and has two boys in Iceland. This book explores how and if she can come to terms with her war experience.

I thought this book was good, though not great. The topic is interesting and the writing is good overall. Charlotte's time in Germany is told in one extended flashback which I think could have been incorporated better into her Icelandic experience. Overall, though, the atmosphere is good and I'm glad I randomly picked this up. ( )

Charlotte leaves post-World War II Berlin to start a new life in Iceland. She is responding to an ad looking for strong women to work on the sheep farms but assumed in that is that the women and farmers may marry. Life on the farm and the weather in Iceland is hard, and Charlotte is also dealing with the ghosts from her past, her Jewish husband and her half-Jewish daughter Lena. Excellent writing; the author goes seamlessly back and forth between Charlotte in present-day Iceland and the young Charlotte in Berlin. Beautiful story; highly recommended. ( )

A haunted retelling of the Selkie legend as historical fiction - In a few glorious places this first novel almost verges into Magical Realism. A German woman loses her husband and their child to the violence of WWII. She moves to a remote farm in Iceland and struggles to remake her life. The author is a professional story-teller, which shows, in her use of traditional tales. I heard her read from & speak about the book at GMU. I look forward to other work by her.
A work-horse of an old farm woman advises: "'If we don't have courage, we just memorize something and do it over and over again, always working on making it easier and safer, drawing a smaller and smaller circle around ourselves.'" (176)
And a moving piece about the drudgery of hard, physical life:
"She washed the fish in cold water, cut it into pieces, and covered it with water. Tomorrow she'd remove the scales and cut off the fins, boil it, and serve it with melted sheep fat and potatoes. And on and on until she rolled over dead ... Was something wrong with her? Did she have some kind of intolerance for daily life?
"And those cows. No matter how often she emptied their udders, they always filled with milk again. Again and again, twice a day, forever and ever....
"Her head was an animal trying to break out of prison." (210)