Quiet as you hold the book in you hand. The pages still. The gentle rise and fall of the first few pages transports you to an aristocratic party held in the von Lingenfels castle. Here the secrets begin. Here a plot is born. Here a promise is made to brave conspirators by Marianne von Lingenfel, the books main character. 

Here is where beauty and stillness end. Where small choices transform into gateways to hell. Where conspirators gather and husbands hang.

Here is where children are ripped from mothers arms and sent to Nazi re-education homes to become Hitler Youth.

Here is where wives and mothers are sent to forced labor camps, death camps, or worse.

Here is where Marianne sets out to find and protect her fellow resistance widows through the countries smoldering wreckage and nightmarish scenes.

From ashes, friendships are formed. Second chances are granted for some and forgiveness sought by all.

Mostly, this maddeningly quiet journey through hell is about choices made, and finding how to live with them.

Three women. One castle. A million choices. One moral compass.

Jessica Shattuck beautifully takes you through one of the most tumultuous periods of history with devastating emotional power. 

This book truly explores what it means to survive, to love, and ultimately, to forgive despite unimaginable hardship. 

Quiet as you hold the book in your hand. The pages still. The images haunting. This story commands your attention while it evokes explosive emotions. Sit in the wake of their choices. Reflect on the power of your own.

~J

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck

Published by: Harper Collins Publishers

Purchased: Barnes and Noble 

Rating :  5 / 5 stars 

Jessica Shattuck

Jessica Shattuck is the author of The Hazards of Good Breeding (a New York Times Notable Book and a Winship/PEN Award finalist) and Perfect Life. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Believer, Wired, Mother Jones, and Glamour, among other publications. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.