BOOK REVIEW: Winter's End by Barbara Pronin

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

We think of D-Day as the beginning of the end of WWII. But it wasn’t the end. Yet. Barbara Pronin’s new historical novel, Winter’s End, takes readers into the lives of Resistance fighters in the Netherlands in the waning days of the war. Nazis are ramping up their cruelty and destruction in a desperate attempt to stave off defeat. Over the devastating winter of 1944-45, peace was still too far off.

The novel follows three women in Haarlem, where the Nazi presence was strong. Evi, a sixteen-year-old patriot, wanting to do more for her country, accepts the assignment of luring lecherous, drunken German officers into the forest to be killed. Zoe, a young veterinarian, repeatedly finds ways to hide (and feed) several Jewish families, Jewish physicians, and a German enemy of the Reich. Mila, the beautiful daughter of a collaborator, uses her position in the father’s home to learn information from high-ranking German officers to pass on to critical members of the Resistance, and, when necessary, perform dangerous missions herself. Along the way, all three women find love in unexpected places.

This is a gripping, inspiring novel of bravery and endurance in the face of fascism.