Women at war

Three novels feature young women rising to very different challenges.

- GILL SOUTH

THE FOREST OF VANISHING STARS, by Kristin Harmel Welbeck, 32.99)

This novel is inspired by World War II facts. The vast Naliboki Forest in Eastern Europe more than 2000km of forestry rich in swamps and game harboured many Jews from surrounding villages in what was then Poland.

Our heroine, Yona, is a young woman who was kidnapped as an infant from her Berlin home in the early 1920s by an old Jewish woman who brought her back to the forest. Jerusza educated Yona on religions, literature, languages, self-defence and, most importantly, survival in the wild. She dies in the early years of WWII and Yona stays in the forest, fearful of the explosions she’s hearing in the distance. But she’s been trained as a warrior and before long she’s showing Jewish families how to live in the forest long term.

Yona has an apparent second sense that she uses to move families on before their encampment can be discovered by the enemy, taking them into the swamps where the Nazis won't follow. Although she comes to love these new friends, she is asked questions about her own background. She knows her parents’ names and where she’s from, but little else. Her past is about to revisit her.

The time comes when younger members of the group want to do more than survive, they want to fight back, which exposes Yona to new dangers and a closeup view of the German army and what her life might have been.

Harmel, who brings to life the fragrance and textures of the forest, with its creatures and trees, creates an atmospheric, tense world. She asks, is your life about what you were born to be, or what you choose to become? Home, Yona realises, is not a place but the people you choose to love.

STOLEN, by Ann-Helén Laestadius Bloomsbury Circus, 36.99)