“To Look Upon the Sun” is a pre-WWII (and also during WWII) German historical fiction book by Shannon St. Hilaire. This book starts with 17 year old Ilse being pregnant and discovering that her baby’s father is Jewish - something she wasn’t aware of until she discovers the family has left Germany. Through her membership in a Nazi program, Ilse goes to another Nazi program, the Lebensborn, to have her child. Upon her arrival there, she discovers that all isn’t what she’s been told. She decides to keep her baby (instead of giving it up like she said she would) and is allowed to work at the Lebensborn helping new mothers-to-be and doing housework. Something happens and Ilse is moved to a different Lebensborn, becoming their cook. There’s more to the plot, but I cannot say more without giving away key bits of info. I have to say that at first I thought “oh, wow, another Lebensborn story - read it, know how this goes.” This one didn’t always match up with how I thought it was going to go, so that was a nice plot twist. However, something about Ilse just didn’t work for me - and I cannot put my finger on exactly why that is. I did like a number of the side characters - from her child’s godfather to the female pilot. They had more depth and I could feel sympathy with them (or maybe I just found them more interesting in general). I could tell that a bit of research went into the creation of this book - and the author’s notes confirms that. This was a fine book, thus the four stars, but this book wasn’t a consistent fantastic read for me.

An absolutely powerful, thrilling, and haunting story of one woman’s fight to own her own body and reproduction. In a world where the government is trying to limit a woman’s choices about when she can have a child, this story rings across time.