The Last Year of the War

by Susan Meissner
Carver County Library hardcover 386 pages
genre: Christian historical fiction

Another wonderful story by Meissner! She's one of my favorite authors we read for book club. This one follows Elise Sontag from her present day elderly situation into her past in 1940s America and Germany. Much of the book focuses on her unlikely friendship in a detention center with a Japanese American girl, Mariko. Elise's father and mother have lived in the United States for twenty years but have not applied for citizenship status when WWII and its fearfulness interrupt their lives in Davenport, Iowa.

I didn't tag any pages in the first half of the book . . . though there was much that I enjoyed. I especially liked the opening pages as Elise describes Alzheimer's as the thief Agnes who steals parts of her life and brain from her. Having seen the devastation that dementia can wreak in a loved-one's life . . . this was a very apt description!

Page 177 - "You know, I don't think it matters now what happened in the past . . . What's important is what happens now. Today." Words of wisdom from Rina, Mariko's adult daughter!

Page 199 - "I had never had a grandmother speak to me this way or look at me with the kind of love with which she was now gazing at me. . . . She loved me without having met me. . . It was so hard to know who I was in that moment, other than a teenage girl loved by her grandmother." Oma is the kind of grandmother I want to be! Loving so extravagantly that the child feels it and knows it thoroughly. (Though I would never want to go for 13 years without meeting a grandchild!) I think part of the reason I tagged this was simply because of that extravagant love . . . like God has for us.

Page  218 - "Love, when it's lavished on you after you've said ugly things, is almost too painful to bear." After the teenaged Elise had erupted at her parents and spewed all her unhappiness, her dad comforts her beautifully. His acceptance of her feelings and understanding of her expression of frustration . . . great parenting!

Page 234 - "We decide who and what we will love and who and what we will hate. We decide what we will do with the love and hate. Every day we decide. It was this that revealed who we were, not the color of our flesh or the shape of our eyes or the language we spoke." To me, this is the key point of the book. Powerful and true - our choices and decisions make us who we are.

Page 269 - "The rich have always been able to get what they want and do what they want. Money is power, Elise. It always has been." Ralph is so very right in terms of "how the world works" but his cynicism is still discouraging. Elise is so young and inexperienced in how the world works. He doesn't make things easy on her!

Page 281 - "The human brain, I have since read, is still ripening when we're seventeen. It's still growing, still forming thought patterns and avenues for arriving at logical conclusions, and it doesn't stop maturing until we reach age twenty-five." Amen! This is so true and yet 18 year olds are legal adults . . . brain development is fascinating.

Page 302 - "She nods in understanding. Mother-love transcends biology." When Elise and Mariko are talking about their lives, Elise explains Pamela and Teddy. This made me think of Katie of course!

Page 379 - "I wanted them to see that not everyone is lucky enough to have family around who love them, and I also wanted them to know that we are all on the road that leads to the edge of our mortality. Life is too brief to waste a minute of it chasing after things that don't matter." Elise brought Pamela and Teddy to nursing homes with her while they were young . . . life's lessons have power.

A reference on page 382 made me think of The Secret Language of Flowers . . . and then yesterday, I saw a copy of it on the library's "discard" cart. I almost bought it, but it's a large print edition and those tend to make me batty when I read them. I love that book and will probably re-read it! This title by Meissner was quite good, but there are others of hers that I like better. The Alzheimer's aspect most resonated with me . . . how awful to start losing parts of your memory and mind.