By: Kate Quinn
Ever hear of Night Witches? Not the fictional kind. Real women doing unbelievable things. In WWII they were Russian fighter pilots and bombers. Who “…flew in outdated Polikarpov U-2s a cloth-and-plywood biplane with open-cockpits, achingly slow and highly flammable – no radio, parachute or brakes.”
Yup, that alone is worth the read. And we love these golden historical nuggets and The Huntress has plenty of them.
The characters in this wonderful book are instantly relatable. But the power of the story comes from Nina Borisovna, a night witch, and Die Jägerin, the Huntress.
Nina grew up desperately poor with an alcohol-infused maniac for a father in a remote place in northern Siberia. She escaped her father to become a pilot, normally not an easy task for a woman, but because of the war she was able to join the Night Witches, training first as a bombardier and later a pilot.
The Huntress grew up privileged in comparison to Nina, but that affluence didn’t stop her from actively and willingly lending her talents for hunting by tracking down and killing people for the glory of the Nazi-crazed killing machine. She feds six starving children then killed them.
Nina and the Huntress crossed paths at Lake Rusalka in Poland culminating in a deadly event. Nina barely escaped and eventually teamed up with Ian Graham and Tony Rodomovsky after the war to find this deadly predator.
The novel crisscrosses time and point-of-view to bring layers of details and wonderful tension as the novel’s setting moves to Boston after the war and to the McBride family. Jordan McBride, a 17-year-old novice photographer helps her father, Dan, with his antique business. Dan meets and marries Anneliese Weber, a war refugee. During the small wedding, Jordan finds a swastika medal hidden in the bridal bouquet. Hmmm…what could that mean?
Ian Graham and Tony Rodomovsky are looking for justice. Ian, a journalist and Tony, a solider and linguist, passionately hunt down war criminals for there own personal reasons. Nina is hell-bent on revenge.
As a book club we enjoyed this novel. We learned things about the war that we didn’t previously know. We had already read The Nightingale and wondered if this would be more of the same. But both books are quite different and both great reads.
We talked about revenge and justice. How emotion rules revenge and how justice needs to be impartial. And we talked about survivaling war and its aftermath.
Definitely a good book for book clubs.
Rating: 8.5