Elise has decided she needs to find a friend from her childhood, Mariko, before she dies. They have not spoken since their world was shattered while still in their teens. They met at an internment camp during World War II and forged an unlikely friendship, Elise's family was German and Mariko's was Japanese and in the internment camp it was encouraged to stick to their own kind. They share their hopes and dreams, among which is to be an American. Both families are sent back to the country's of their origin before the war ends. Elise is determined to determined to return to her true home, the United States, even after they send her away. It is a story of dreams and acceptance and figuring out how to survive. It swept me up and broke my heart as these young girls are sent 'home' to a place where they had never been and didn't even speak the language.

This histoical novel draws the reader in, and holds thier attention to the final page. The story is well written and researched.

Lindas Book Obsession Reviews “The Last Year of the War” by Susan Meissner, Berkley, March 2019

WOW! WOW!WOW! Susan Meissner, Author of “The Last Year of the War” has written an amazing, unique, riveting, captivating, intense, heart-breaking, emotional and intriguing novel. Susan Meissner describes vividly the characters, events and landscape in a period in United States History that is often not openly discussed as it should be. The Genres of this Novel and Historical Fiction and Fiction. The story takes place during World War Two, mostly in the United States, but also takes place in Japan and Germany. The timeline goes to the past or future when it pertains to the characters or events in the story. The authors describe her characters as complex and complicated due to the circumstances in the story.

Elise Sontag is an American citizen of German Descent. She goes to school, and lives an American life. Elise doesn’t speak German. When the war breaks out, her German father, a legal United States resident is arrested. and regarded as a spy. He is eventually sent with the rest of the family to Crystal City Internment Camp in Texas. Elise meets a special friend Mariko Inoue, a Japanese American teen who also is in the Internment Camp. Mariko writes a story and wants Elise to help her find an ending.

I appreciate the hours of research that Susan Meissner has done to tell this story. Can you imagine two American teenagers imprisoned because of their backgrounds in the war? Although there was shopping , stores, schools and hospitals, the camp was surrounded by barbed wire.

In the last year of the war, many of the German and Japanese families that were held in the camp, were sent back to Japan and Germany. Germany was being bombed by the Allies, and Elise is at a loss, since she doesn’t speak German. Will Elise and Mariko keep their promise to be friends?

I highly recommend this novel to readers who appreciate World War Two and the unique part of history . Be warned, keep some Kleenex on hand.
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You know author Susan Meissner from her amazing historical novels As Bright As Heaven and Secrets of a Charmed Life. And from page 1 I knew I’d enjoy The Last Year of the War. I am in awe of authors like Susan who write so beautifully and can weave a compelling story, especially one that delves into history. I began this yesterday and already cannot wait to pick it up and read more today.

SYNOPSIS:

Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa fourteen-year-old in 1943–aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity.

The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences.

But when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her. In that devastating crucible she must discover if she has the will to rise above prejudice and hatred and re-claim her own destiny, or disappear into the image others have cast upon her.

SO SO GOOD!



Due out March 2019

I stayed up late too many nights this week, unable to put this story down. With dynamic characters whose stories weave from present and past throughout the book, Susan Meissner tells a wonderful story of friendship and life during a little told part of World War ll.

*ARC provided by NetGalley

This one is really good. It's about 2 teens that meet in an internment camp toward the end of WWII. Elise is American born German and Mariko is American born Japanese. They meet at the camp school and instantly become friends. Though they only know each other for a short time, they form a bond that stays with them all of their lives. The story mostly follows Elise. It's a first person narrative. A book from Mariko's perspective might be quite interesting, actually, though I quite enjoyed Elise. This is well researched and well imagined. The story is definitely compelling. I quite enjoyed it. If you enjoy WWII historical fiction, this one checks all of the boxes and I would definitely recommend it.

I love historical fiction about World War II and especially about internment camps. this was a beautiful story about the friendship between a Japanese girl and a German girl. I loved how the characters felt so real in this well written book. This is going to be one of my favorite books that I have read dealing with this subject.

So many emotions in this book. From sadness, and despair to hope and love. You will not be able to put this book down! Another really great book by this author!! Thank you and the author for the chance to read an early copy

I always enjoy Susan Meissner’s take on historical drama, where kind-hearted characters help each other overcome life’s tragedies and fight for hope. I’ve read much about the Crystal City interment camp (Train to Crystal City & other books & articles) and found this story to be well-researched. Definetely a worthwhile read for historical fiction lovers!

Oh, I love it when a book makes me feel deeply! That’s what we all want from fiction, isn’t it? A story that makes us cry, or laugh, sigh, or see the world in a different way. That’s why I can’t ever pass up a book by Susan Meissner! She creates unforgettable characters and poignant scenes that your life is changed in many ways.

Historical fiction is a favorite genre because not only does the story entertain me, but it teaches me something too. We can all learn from history—a bit about the world around us, a bit about what makes people the way they are, and a bit about ourselves.

‘We belong far less to where we’ve come from than where we want to go.’ ~Franz Werfel

Young Elsie Sontag is a stirring character. Living during WWII, and enduring the hardships of prejudice, hatred, and other turmoils of war, Elise is sure to make her way into your heart and cling to your sympathies.

Get some tissues and prepare your heart. This is a fabulous read.

5 Stars

Cover: Love
Title: Love
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 400
I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley.

an amazing story..heartwarming and heartbreaking. The characters were relate able and like able...even Frances!

I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about internment during WWII, but I did not know that Americans of German descent were also interned. Maybe because I am on the west coast, I heard more about Japanese internment.

I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this book and I highly recommend it to any historical fiction fan

Thanks to Netgalley and Berkley for the opportunity to read this pre-release. This novel checked all the boxes for me! Historical Fiction - yes, dual timelines - yes, characters I actually cared about - yes, and a plot that kept me reading and enjoying this, my first Susan Meissner novel but not my last.

This is a book I could not put down. It drew me in immediately and I'm still thinking about these two teenagers whose bond was formed within an internment camp. As both families are repatriated after the war, the girls lose touch. The book explores the meaning of friendships and the loyalty to family and country. The tale is poignant and heart-breaking. It is also a look at WWII from immigrants' point of view.

Memories are a funny thing - they can take on more importance than they might have had in the first place. But sometimes, they really are all that.. As Elise struggles with Alzheimers Disease and the memory loss that accompanies it, she knows she must locate her friend Mariko before she can no longer remember her or why she was so important. With the help of Google, Elise finds her and sets off on her own to find her. Flashbacks tell how Elise and Mariko met and of the promise they made to each other. This is a poignant story of friendship and great loss. More importantly, Mariko and Elise show us that friends can be found in the worst of circumstances and have a positive impact on us.

I have read numerous books on WWII but this was a new perspective for me. While I have read about the Japanese interment camps, I never realized that the Germans were sent there as well. This is a moving story about a friendship between a German girl and a Japanese girl. They meet when they are 15 and then again in their eighties. It’s a story about history, love and friendship and how in endures the test of time. #netgalley #thelastyearofthewar

The year is 1943 and 14 year old Elise is living a normal teenage life in Iowa. Her parents immigrated from Germany years before but hadn't gotten their citizenship yet. They still have family in Germany and are worried about them but their lives are far removed from the war on a day to day basis. UNTIL, Elsie's father is arrested as a possible German spy and sent to an internment camp. Soon Elsie and her mother join him at the camp. Life behind barbed wire is difficult for the children in the camp - who have only known life as Americans - and there is a definite division in the school between the Japanese and the Germans. Elsie and Mariko (a Japanese American teenager from California) become friends and that friendship helps make life in the internment camp bearable for both of them until a forced separation makes life unbearable.

This is a wonderful, well-written, extremely well researched novel. The character of Elsie is so well written that I cried with her during parts of her story. She is not a character that I will soon forget. I love reading historical fiction and learning history that I didn't know. I knew about the Japanese being sent to internment camps but had no idea that there were Germans sent to camps, too, and I had no idea that some of them were returned to their original country during the war. This is a fantastic book about little known situations with characters who stay in your mind. I highly recommend this new book by the wonderful Susan Meissner.

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

This is a historical fiction that will keep you engaged in reading from page one. It is a story of friendship between Elise (German girl) and Mariko (her Japanese friend), who happened to be in the detention camp. Their fathers were considered dangerous and arrested, a German industrial chemist and a Japanese grocery store owner. The author described lives of first generation of Americans in 1940s and their American-born children. Their struggles and hopes-- to give the most of opportunities that America could offer to hard working people--were similar to the ones of the contemporary America. The issue of racial stereotyping at the time of WWII along with the issues of survival and making the best out of given situation were traced through the lives of Elise and Mariko.
I was so much affected by this book that at times, I felt like Elise, losing my mind prepaturaly to dementia. Yet, it was impossible to forget the details of this well-constructed story.

Writing: 4 Characters: 4.5 Plot: 4

An historical novel that plunges you right into the WWII period through the eyes of Elsie Sontag — a ten-year old Iowan girl whose life is utterly upended when her father is unjustly arrested as an enemy alien under Executive Order 9066. We follow her along a tortuous path from Iowa to an internment camp in Texas to an unwilling repatriation to Germany in the last year of the war (she doesn’t even speak German). Each step provides a slap-in-the-face kind of opportunity to learn how labels change the way we perceive and treat others.

The book opens when Elise is 81. She is coming to terms with an Alzheimers diagnosis and more than anything wants to find Mariko — the friend she made in the internment camp many years prior. As an aside, I fell in love with this book because of the way Elise anthropomorphizes her disease:

“What I feel is that I’ve been saddled with a sticky-fingered houseguest who is slowly and sweetly taking everything of mine for her own. I can’t get rid of her, the doctor assured me, and I can’t outwit her. I’ve named my diagnosis Agnes after a girl at my junior high school in Davenport — Agnes Finster — who was forever taking things that didn’t belong to her out of lockers.”

Each of the four parts of the book starts with a scene from elderly Elise’s life as she gets closer to finding Mariko. The rest of the book details her journey: Davenport, Iowa after her father’s arrest (part 1), the largely Japanese internment camp (part 2), Germany during the last year of the war (part 3), and finally, her path to and life in California (part 4).

It’s an utterly gripping story — very difficult to put down. Elise’s voice is real and thoroughly human as she struggles to find her place in the world and understand why people behave the way they do. She struggles with finding a place she can call home. The narrative clearly articulates how war affects everyday people who want no part in it and yet are given little choice. I found the historic details to be largely accurate (although I did wonder about a few small details).

Surprising plot twists! I believe this would be great for both adults and young adults.

I loved this book. Susan Meissner writes really well, and makes you care for and about the characters in her book. The plot and the characters and the believability of the characters actions and moods and decisions is reason to keep reading "The Last Year of the War". There is another reason. It is amazing that this book illuminates some fairly recent American history that I didn't know. We have all been taught about what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II in this country, but what I didn't know was that German Americans and Italian Americans were also relocated to internment camps in the United States. It is terribly important that know our history. This book reflects intense research, and I am really happy that I read it. I will recommend it to my students.