1940, war rages in Europe. Daniel Summerskill’s childhood ends abruptly when his home is bombed and he learns a secret about his identity. Meanwhile, in Nazi occupied Warsaw, the Jews are forced into a ghetto amid danger and fear…
The Seamstress of Warsaw is an historical novel set in 1940 in both London and Warsaw.
Daniel undergoes the most dramatic character arc as he goes from an idealistic boy to an undercover fighter. I am not sure that I found his storyline altogether credible but it made for a fascinating read.
Meanwhile, Helena’s diary entries of events in Warsaw felt only too real. Death lurks in the ghetto and she is fiercely determined to save her young daughter Ilsa. These descriptions were often hard to read but the survival instinct shone brightly amidst the terror.
There is a lot of emotion is this book as characters deal with danger and brutality as well as conflict over identity. Our own knowledge of the Holocaust gives insight into upcoming events and feel the dread of anticipation as the plot unfolds. I think the author has well researched the period in order to bring it to life vividly.
The Seamstress of Warsaw is an engaging and heart wrenching book about the endurance of the human spirit, love and identity.
The Seamstress of Warsaw book blurb
1940
London
A man learns a shocking truth about his past.
Warsaw
A mother writes a diary as the ghetto walls go up.
From the bombed streets of London, to occupied Warsaw, to the Polish forests bristling with partisans, will their paths cross?
Will their pasts be reconciled?
And will they survive the deadly assaults on their freedom and their lives?
THE SEAMSTRESS OF WARSAW is a tale of endurance and loss, family and blood, stories and histories, that questions the nature of who we are and where we are going, when the road ahead is burning.
Rebecca Mascull is an author of historical novels. She also writes saga fiction under the pen-name of Mollie Walton.
Rebecca’s latest book under the Mascull name is coming on September 18th 2021, THE SEAMSTRESS OF WARSAW, the powerful tale of two people unknowingly connected to each other, caught up in the whirlwind of World War II, whose perilous journeys we follow from the Blitz to the Warsaw Ghetto and beyond, published by SpellBound.
Mollie Walton’s The Ironbridge Saga series is set in the dangerous world of the iron industry: THE DAUGHTERS OF IRONBRIDGE (2019). The second book in the trilogy is THE SECRETS OF IRONBRIDGE (2020), set in the brickyards of the 1850s. Book three is set in the coalmines and servants’ quarters of the 1870s: THE ORPHAN OF IRONBRIDGE (2021). All three are published by Bonnier Zaffre. Mollie’s next trilogy will be set in WW2 North Yorkshire and the first book of this saga will be out in March 2022, published by Welbeck.
The first novel she wrote as Rebecca Mascull, THE VISITORS (2014) tells the story of Adeliza Golding, a deaf-blind child living on her father’s hop farm in Victorian Kent. Her second novel SONG OF THE SEA MAID (2015) is set in the C18th and concerns an orphan girl who becomes a scientist and makes a remarkable discovery. Her third novel, THE WILD AIR (2017) is about a shy Edwardian girl who learns to fly and becomes a celebrated aviatrix but the shadow of war is looming. All are published by Hodder & Stoughton.
She also completed the finishing chapters of her friend and fellow novelist Vanessa Lafaye’s final work, a novella called MISS MARLEY, a prequel to Dickens’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL. This novella is published by HarperCollins.
Rebecca has worked in education, has a Masters in Writing and lives by the sea in the east of England. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, based at the University of Lincoln.
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