Jewells of Thought

Sunday morning I made up my mind about my current read. I had a few seconds to quickly decide between two books. In the end the one that won was a book I have read before.

Actually as I opened the book I saw a tally. I don’t think it’s accurate though. The markings specified 7, seven times that I have read this book. However, I don’t think I added the last couple of times. This is a book that is very special to me for a couple of reasons.

The book is historical fiction. Yet also loosely based on a real location and event in Czechoslovakia. One of the dreaded camps in this country was named Theresienstadt. This was the focal location of the storyline.

There are some interesting pieces to this book that struck me in the right spot. The Nazi soldier falls for the beauty outward and inward of his damsel in distress. She just happened to be caught in her Uncle’s farce. She was a Jew in Dachau, but her paperwork said Jude simply because a Gestapo pig at a checkpoint tried to assault her. Her Uncle’s paperwork in the end worked and literally saved her life. The Nazi soldier saved her with those papers. Her beauty is what saved her eventually and brought life back into his depleted heart.

There has been something so incredible about this story that is moving. Last year I was blessed to have inadvertently had a conversation with the author Kate Breslin. Talk about being star struck. It was amazing to have that interaction with her. ‘For Such A Time’ has been a truly heart changing book for me. Grandpa Leo was a POW so anything German to me felt like a stain. It took various ways of God breaking my heart a little bit for me to comprehend that not all Germans were the same back then, but also that those Germans are not the Germans of today either.

Grandpa was liberated by the Russians in Czecholslovakia. Another reason this book had an interest for me once I fully read the book that first time. Plus what I also love about how she wove this book chapter to chapter is that she also braided the book of Esther into it. The perfect storm of puzzle pieces to form this complicated romance that led them back to the Bible by the end of the ride. It’s still hard I get as emotional as the characters do each time I read these pages, but I love it the read is still as fascinating as the first time.