Eva's Story

A plainspoken love story set in rural Nazi Germany in 1936, this debut novel traces an ordinary farm woman's political awakening. Narrator Eva is an obedient wife and mother at the outset, with no worldly contact beyond her small farm outside the Black Forest. When her husband is called to serve in the army, Eva is left to maintain the farm with her teenage children, Nazi Youth members Olga and Karl. Eva's life gains a sense of purpose after she discovers Nathanael, a Jewish university student who's escaped from the Mauernich camp nearby. Initially acting on impulse, and later aware of the implications of her decision, she allows him to remain hidden in her chicken coop for what becomes two years. Nathanael helps breed and care for the chickens, keeping the farm afloat in a time of increasingly desperate food shortages and strict farm regulations. Eva's initial na vet is often implausible; she's never heard about the subjugation, ill-treatment or deportation of Jews, though her family and entire village are devoted Nazi citizens. But her world expands exponentially with Nathanael's arrival and the beginning of their love affair. She learns to pose as a perfect patriot, and cleverly arranges things so that Gestapo officers, farm inspectors and her children suspect nothing. When she sells eggs at market, she hears neighbors speak hopefully of collecting bounties for escaped Jews, but she also learns that the local convent has been hiding Jewish children. When Eva is pressured by a nun at the convent into taking in a Jewish orphan as a farm helper, she integrates the traumatized teenage ""Mary"" into her household. But Mary's arrival excites suspicion, so Eva bravely hatches an escape plan for both her lover and her ward. Cirino's understated prose lacks resonance, and flat dialogue and heavy-handed speeches keep the characters vague, their personalities inscrutable. What animates this earnest work is the inherent drama of a simple woman coming into her own identity within the tumult of a tragic time. (Oct.)