Love Will Not Die

The Lost Husband by Shari J Ryan is a powerful and heartbreaking historical dual timeline novel that consumed me from the start.

The action is set in Amsterdam at the start of World War II, and then moves to Auschwitz in January 1945. Historians will recognise the latter date as the time when the Nazis emptied Auschwitz of all those who were able to walk, to go on a death march, before the Soviets liberated the camp. The story sees the leading characters marching through Poland. Both time periods alternate as the tale is told through the eyes of the leading lady.

We learn about the indomitable human spirit. Despite witnessing her husband die at the hands of the Nazis, the leading lady kept going for the life within. Darkness and despair could not kill the human spirit.

Ending up in Auschwitz, we see the dehumanisation of the people – their names, clothes and hair were taken from them but their humanity remained. “I still see humans. Suffering.” Little acts of kindness, that said ‘I see you’, meant a great deal.

Suffering from dysentery, a character wonders if she hallucinated seeing her husband in a Nazi uniform. She was left “in limbo between grief and a sliver of hope that my eyes had deceived me.” She needed to know. She clung to the hope that what she had seen all those years ago, simply wasn’t the truth.