Library for the War-Wounded

October 30, 2023
Helfer’s touching second installment in a trilogy inspired by her family history (after Last House Before the Mountain) focuses on her WWII veteran father and his passion for books. Josef Helfer is conscripted straight out of finishing school into the German army near the end of the war. After he loses a leg due to frostbite, he marries his nurse, Grete. The couple settle in the Austrian mountains and raise four children. Monika, the second-oldest, narrates. As a young girl, Monika doesn’t understand Josef’s dedication to the extensive library he’s established in the Convalescent Home for the War-wounded, which he manages and where his family lives. After an official from the association that owns the home tells Josef that it will be remodeled and the library converted into two rooms for lodging, Josef fears losing his books. He removes the most valued volumes and hides them, thus risking his job and the family’s stability. Helfer’s introspective remembrances of her childhood, complete with anecdotal narratives of her relatives and glimpses of the love shared by her parents, breathe life into the characters’ simple moments of joy amid times of hardship. Helfer’s fans will appreciate her searching perspective on her father.