Cradles of the Reich A novel

Based on historical events in Nazi Germany, this novel follows the lives of three women who intersect at Heim Hochland as part of the Lebensborn breeding program intended to help racially fit women produce Aryan babies for Hitler. Gundi is a university student involved in the resistance who finds herself pregnant by her activist Jewish boyfriend. Hilde is eighteen, underappreciated at home, devoted to Hitler's regime, and eager to raise her status by having a Nazi official's baby. Irma is a nurse who lost her fiancé and unborn child during the Great War, discovered her beau concealing a woman in his cellar, and needs the fresh start that working at Heim Hochland offers. Surrounded by looted art and antiques, sustained by the best food available, and subject to the whims of powerful men, these women find connections among the expectant mothers, "apprentice" mothers, and employees of the facility. When Gundi's child is born with obviously non-Aryan characteristics, she learns of the potential consequences (euthanasia) and must seek help where she can. Parallels may be drawn between Nazi eugenics then and reproductive agency now, and the fundamental sexism of men making decisions about women's bodies, providing ample topics for discussion groups. For fans of Martha Hall Kelly's The Lilac Girls (2016), Lisa See's The Island of Sea Women (2019), Jennifer Worth's Call the Midwife (2002), and World War II women's stories.

Coburn returns to fiction (after the memoir We'll Always Have Paris) with a chilling tale of a Nazi maternity home. When the unmarried Gundi Schiller's family doctor confirms her pregnancy in 1939, German authorities force her to live at Heim Hochland, a maternity home for the "racially pure" near Munich. Gundi abhors the Lebensborn program, but knows she must acquiesce and never reveal the identity of her child's father, Leo Solomon, a Jewish member of the resistance. By contrast, Hilde Kramer, pregnant by the married Obergruppenführer Werner Ziegler, believes her spot at Heim Hochland lends her prestige. Nurse Irma Binz, a patriotic German with a tragic past, takes a job at Heim Hochland at the urging of an old friend. Amid revelations of the home's practice of allowing women to voluntarily have sex with Nazi officers, the stories of the three central characters play out. As Hilde takes desperate measures after a health crisis to achieve her aspirations, Irma's friendships with the women in the home put a strain on her loyalty to the fascist country, especially when it comes to the danger faced by Gundi and her daughter. Coburn's characters are rather pat, and the broad outlines of the plot are predictable. Still, she brings to life the twisted realities of the Lebensborn program. Though lackluster as fiction, it offers an illuminating look at the period. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff Literary. (Oct.)

The author's first historical novel explores the perils of motherhood in prewar Nazi Germany. In 1939, three women live at Heim Hochland, a home for "racially pure" unmarried mothers in a secret breeding program to create Aryan babies for Hitler. Gundi Schiller and Hilde Kramer are pregnant, and Irma Binz is a nurse. Basing her novel on a real Nazi program, Coburn skillfully intertwines the stories of distinctly different personalities: Gundi secretly distributes anti-Nazi flyers; Hilde is a true Hitler Girl; Irma just wants to do her job and stay out of trouble. Secrets abound: Gundi had sex with a Jew; Hilde wants to be an actress; Irma treats injured resistance fighters. Gundi carries the most weight in this carefully researched story, and she is the most sympathetic. A leering doctor rhapsodizes to her, "You, my dear, are perfection. I have been waiting for a girl with your features since we started the program four years ago." And the man everyone presumes to be the father, her friend Erich Meyer, looks "as if he'd been plucked straight off a Nazi propaganda poster." But she has actually only had sex with Leo Solomon, and if the baby shows evidence of being a Mischling, a mix of Jew and Aryan, it will be euthanized and Gundi could be arrested. Hilde, who looks like she could pull a plow and has a figure that "look[s] like a can of evaporated milk," seems aimless and shallow. The 18-year-old miscarries the baby of her married Obergruppenführer lover but hopes to get pregnant by him again when he returns to Heim Hochland. She certainly isn't making the "productive contributions to Germany" that her mother and SS officer father want. She feebly attempts to impress Propaganda Minister Goebbels when he pays a visit, pitching a movie idea: All is good until a Jew comes to town. It's an old idea, he says dismissively. On one level, this compelling story is about women and babies; on another, it portends a dark future of concentration camps and war. A deep well of discussion topics for book-club readers. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.