Crossing the Line

Shipman (A Time for Defiance) delivers an insightful story about the trials of three women during the Holocaust. In occupied Poland in 1941, Natalia Wajcblum longs to be a doctor, but her father doesn’t approve of her ambition and Jews are now banned from enrolling in medical school. When Natalia and her family realize they’ll be forced into Krakow’s Jewish ghetto, they attempt to flee to Sweden, but are betrayed by a family friend. Meanwhile, Polish pharmacist Irena Drozdzikowska and her colleagues struggle to procure medications for their Jewish customers in the ghetto and are threatened by the Nazis for attempting to do so. In a separate narrative thread, Elsa Baumann, a young German woman in Breslau, is pressured by her soldier boyfriend, Erik, into sleeping with him. After Erik deploys, she finds out she’s pregnant and nearly dies from an illegal abortion. The women’s paths intersect once Elsa is forced to join the SS and is assigned to the Krakow ghetto, where she meets Natalia and Irene. Shipman breathes life into the narrative by spotlighting the characters’ common humanity, as when Elsa commits to helping Natalia and Irene after she witnesses the depravity of the SS’s summary executions. Historical fiction fans ought to take a look. (Dec.)