The Things We Cannot Say
Kelly Rimmer, 2019
Graydon House
432 pp.
ISBN#: 9781525823565
Summary
In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century.
Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married.
But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate.
Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears.
Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents’ farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief.
Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced…and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Kelly Rimmer is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and worldwide bestselling author of contemporary and historical fiction, including The Secret Daughter and The Things We Cannot Say. The Warsaw Orphan is her most recent.
Kelly lives in rural Australia with her family and a whole menagerie of badly behaved animals. Her novels have been translated into more than 20 languages. (From the author's website.)
Do read this moving backstory to The Things We cannot Say, Kelly's novel set during World War II and inspired by her grandarents, who eventualy left Poland for Australia.
Book Reviews
Rimmer gives each story line the space to develop organically, resulting in concluding chapters that tie the two women's stories together in an extremely moving fashion. Fans of Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale (2015) and Pam Jenoff's The Orphan's Tale (2017) will enjoy this absorbing, emotional tale of love, heartbreak, and resilience.
Booklist
An intense story of survival, hardship, and heartbreak, The Things We Cannot Say is sure to evoke emotion in even the most cynical reader.
New York Journal of Books
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