259. Rose Under Fire
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by:
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II
368 pages, published September 10, 2013
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
While flying an Allied fighter plane from Paris to England, American ATA pilot and amateur poet, Rose Justice, is captured by the Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück, a notorious women’s concentration camp. During her time there, Rose befriends the “Rabbits,” a group of women subjected to horrific Nazi experimentation. In the face of unspeakable crimes, Rose and her friends suffer horribly, but also find the strength to act with compassion, courage and cunning.
Quotes
“Hope is the most treacherous thing in the world. It lifts you and lets you plummet. But as long as you’re being lifted you don’t worry about plummeting.”
“God knows what I thought! Your brain does amazing acrobatics when it doesn’t want to believe something.”
“There are four forces which work together if you want to put something into the sky and have it stay there. One of these is lift.
Lift is made when the air pressure under a wing is greater than the air pressure over the wing. Then the wing gets pushed upwards. That’s how birds fly. That’s how kites fly – a kite is basically just a solitary wing. That’s how airplanes fly.
But people need lift too. People don’t get moving, they don’t soar, they don’t achieve great heights, without something buoying them up.”
“Hope has no feathers
Hope takes flight
tethered with twine
like a tattered kite,
slave to the wind’s
capricious drift
eager to soar
but needing lift
Hope waits stubbornly
watching the sky
for turmoil, feeding on
things that fly:
crows, ashes, newspapers,
dry leaves in flight
all suggest wind
that could lift a kite
Hope sails and plunges
firmly caught
at the end of her string –
fallen slack, pulling taught,
ragged and featherless.
Hope never flies
but doggedly watches
for windy skies.”
“Incredible. It is just incredible that you can notice something like that when your face is so cold you can’t feel it anymore, and you know perfectly well you are surrounded by death, and the only way to stay alive is to endure the howling wind and hold your course. And still the sky is beautiful.”
‘When you cut down the hybrid rose,
its blackened stump below the graft
spreads furtive fingers in the dirt.
It claws at life, weaving a raft
of suckering roots to pierce the earth.
The first thin shoot is fierce and green,
a pliant whip of furious briar
splitting the soil, gulping the light.
You hack it down. It skulks between
the flagstones of the garden path
to nurse a hungry spur in shade
against the porch. With iron spade
you dig and drag it from the gravel
and toss it living on the fire.
‘It claws up towards the light again
hidden from view, avoiding battle
beyond the fence. Unnoticed, then,
unloved, unfed, it clings and grows
in the wild hedge. The subtle briar
armors itself with desperate thorns
and stubborn leaves – and struggling higher,
unquenchable, it now adorns
itself with blossom, till the stalk
is crowned with beauty, papery white
fine petals thin as chips of chalk
or shaven bone, drinking the light.
‘Izabela, Aniela, Alicia, Eugenia,
Stefania, Rozalia, Pelagia, Irena,
Alfreda, Apolonia, Janina, Leonarda,
Czeslava, Stanislava, Vladyslava, Barbara,
Veronika, Vaclava, Bogumila, Anna,
Genovefa, Helena, Jadviga, Joanna,
Kazimiera, Ursula, Vojcziecha, Maria,
Wanda, Leokadia, Krystyna, Zofia.
‘When you cut down the hybrid rose
to cull and plough its tender bed,
trust there is life beneath your blade:
the suckering briar below the graft,
the wildflower stock of strength and thorn
whose subtle roots are never dead.”
My Take
Rose Under Fire is the third book in a loose trilogy by Elizabeth Wein (the others are Code Name Verity and The Pearl Thief). Even though Code Name Verity was by far my favorite, I did enjoy Rose Under Fire. While it was hard to read another book dealing with the Holocaust, Wein manages to tell an inspirational story and, as a bonus, embellishes it with some very beautiful poems.
