Karolina's Twins: A Novel

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Re-telling your nightmare of living in occupied Poland during WWII would stir up emotions that I would want to forget, but Lena Scheinman Woodward wanted it told. Lena Woodward, elegant and poised, has lived a comfortable life among Chicago Society since she immigrated to the US at the end of World War II.

According to the author’s note at the end of the book, although "Karolina’s Twins" is fictional, it is based on the experiences of a particular person. Balson's dialogue is stilted and his prose is workmanlike, but the survivor's tale is the main attraction and does not disappoint.

In the story, the author brings back the lawyer/ private detective team, Catherine Lockhart and Liam Taggart, that we met in the author’s previous two books. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. It was my first visit to the Vatican, most of us where there for the first time so it was amazing to share that experience. She comes into Liam’s private detective office, but she demands that his wife, Catherine, be present to hear the story. Yet Lena's narrative contained dialogue and other characteristics of flashbacks that made it more engaging, and lent it dramatic power.

There is, of course, specific emphasis on the Jewish population and the injustice dealt them under Nazi occupation.Numerous trips to Warsaw and southern Poland provided the inspiration for his first novel, Once We Were Brothers. The recounting of Lena's story feels like a narration that the character may have completed for archival purposes, perhaps with a few more personal details. He was an adjunct professor of business law at the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business for twenty-five years and was a frequent lecturer in the federal bar certification course and in trial advocacy seminars. Catherine must get to the information needed for Liam to find the children and/or prove they actually existed. I found myself reading furiously to get back to Lena’s story when the author tried to tell us what Catherine and Liam were doing between visits from Lena.

But it is a very moving and rich story about about acts of strength and courage in the face of horrible circumstances and choices. Lena Woodward, an elderly woman, enlists the help of both lawyer Catherine Lockhart and private investigator Liam Taggart to appraise the story of her harrowing past in Nazi occupied Poland.This book almost entirely focuses on Lena's story of her life as a Jewish Polish woman during the Nazi occupation. The modern day story, though I do like the husband and wife team as characters is not as strongly written. Dropped off by taxi and climbed the stairs to our room, it is a bit of a climb to the top floor, but you wouldnt get the fantastic views from the balcony without the climb, so it is well worth it. Every time I hear a story about survivors from WWII I am reminded that the hatred started off slowly. This is a fictionalized account of the true story of a survivor named Fay, and that is why it rates 4 stars vs 3.