The Golden Doves

BY MARTHA HALL KELLY

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In The Golden Doves, Arlette works in a small cafe in Paris’s Flower and Bird Market. The cafe only employs survivors of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The cafe owner, Marianne, refuses to buy an espresso machine, so the small cafe is limited to coffee. In honor of Le Joyeux Oiseau Cafe, enjoy this recipe for Coffee Creme Brûlée courtesy of Mindy’s Cooking Obsession.

** Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for the chance to review The Golden Doves in exchange for my honest review. **

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Even avid readers have moments in life when their reading drops off. For me, it was when my kids were little. The baby and toddler years are tough, and there isn’t much free time to read. Then, not reading becomes a habit into itself.

I remember the moment that I decided to get back into reading. I was working in the marketing department in one of the Air Force’s Force Support Squadrons. After a meeting with the head of the base library, I longingly ran my finger along the new fiction shelf and remembered how much I loved reading. I decided right then and there to get back into it, so I picked up one of those new releases. It was Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly, and it is still to this day one of my favorite books.

The Golden Doves is not technically part of the Lilac Girls series, which follows the family line of socialite Caroline Ferriday in its sequels. Instead, it reintroduces us to several characters from the original Lilac Girls book. This is particularly true of Herta Oberheuser, the female doctor who slowly adopted the Nazi’s belief system when she went to work at the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

The Golden Doves takes place in 1952, shortly after the end of the war. It tells the tale of two unlikely Allied spies who gave Germany a run for their money before their capture. Josie was an American who was recruited to intercept radio signals. Arlette was a young French woman who became pregnant from a German soldier. Her aunt sent her to a state-run birthing house to have the baby, which would then be seized by the Nazis and adopted to a high-ranking Nazi family. Arlette couldn’t bear to lose her baby, so a nurse who was secretly working as a spy guided her to safety. Arlette and Josie lived with baby Willie in a small Paris apartment, where they intercepted high-level radio messages. They became known as The Golden Doves, and the Nazis would stop at nothing to capture them. Then, a chance encounter caused the Nazis to arrest them, not knowing they were the spies in which they sought. The women were sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where they endured unspeakable horrors until the war ended. Most painful of all was the seizure of baby Willie while Arlette was working one day. Arlette had no idea whether her son was alive and merely transferred somewhere else, or whether he was killed at the camp.

Now, in 1952, Josie is living in Texas working for the U.S. Army. She evaluates former Nazi scientists and determines whether they are still sympathetic to the Nazis or whether they are “reformed” enough to help the United States in its race to out-arm Russia. One day, her boss sends her on a mission to find Dr. Snow, a virologist responsible for horrific medical experiments while at Ravensbrück. Josie’s own mother was killed in these experiments. Her travels lead her back to France, where she briefly reunites with Arlette. Arlette still lives in a cloud of grief praying that her son is alive. Then, a rich stranger named Luc finds her in her cafe one day and claims that he has her son. He runs a non-profit orphanage named Hope House that reunites war orphans with their parents or finds a suitable home for them. Luc offers to bring Arlette back to French Guinea so that she can find her son. Needless to say, Josie and Arlette’s missions are not quite what they seem.

The Golden Doves was a breathtaking tale of healing, longing, and the need for closure in the face of unspeakable evil. While it was extremely sad to hear about the conditions that real women had to face at Ravensbrück, I would not consider this book a tearjerker. I only mention this because I know some people do not like books that are intended to make them cry, or they have to be “in the mood” to do so. If this is you, fear not. It methodically painted a picture of the Nazi’s brutality without making the reader feel like they needed to cry.

Instead of centralizing around Arlette and Josie’s experiences at the concentration camp, The Golden Doves addressed the quest for justice that existed in post-war life. Even after the Nuremberg Trials, some citizens felt like justice had not been served. Josie was fueled by her desire to “catch” Nazis that she felt had lied their way to lighter sentences. After the atrocities that she viewed, how can one possibly heal? However, the nation seemed intent on forgiving Nazi scientists so that they could defeat Russia. Was this good? Bad? Understandable? Inconceivable? How can the entire nation move on when the people who had harmed her were running free? In Arlette’s case, how could people forget the children that were lost? Everyone else was moving on, but Arlette could not let go of the son she had lost. Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.” In order for Arlette and Josie to experience personal peace, they needed justice first.

I highly recommend The Golden Doves and the rest of The Lilac Girls series for historical fiction fans wanting to explore different perspectives of the Holocaust. Kelly does an amazing job writing her stories in a way that makes the reader engage in the same moral dilemmas that average citizens must have wrestled with at that time. While there is no shortage of books about the Holocaust, The Golden Doves and Kelly’s other books stand apart from the rest of the field. I will happily pick up any future books that she writes about this terrible, world-altering event.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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My Rating System Explained

5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️:  This was an amazing book, and I can't stop thinking about it.   It impacted me emotionally or changed my perspective.  My thoughts keep flickering back to it at random times throughout the day.  I will absolutely recommend it to my friends or to one of my book clubs.

4 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️:  This was a really good book.  Parts of it stuck with me, and I might mention it in a conversation.  There is a high likelihood that I will recommend it to my friends or to one of my book clubs.

3 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️:  I liked this book.  It allowed me to escape from reality for a while.  While I might tell somebody about it if I think it will interest them, I will probably not suggest it to one of my book clubs.

2 Stars ⭐️⭐️:  There's something about this book that I didn't like.  I wasn't willing to go all the way down to a one-star rating, but I'm definitely not digging it.  I may recognize that this book is not for me, but it might be for other people.  I will not recommend it to my friends or one of my book clubs.

1 Star ⭐️:  My rarest rating.  I really didn't like this book.  Something in the story line upset me, and I probably "hate-read" the majority of the book.  Not only will I not recommend it, but I will actively tell people that I did not like it.