When We Fall is set during the tumultuous latter years of WW2 and in it we are introduced to two very different young women, each forced to play a wartime role they didn’t expect, and both of them caught up with Stefan Bergel, an enigmatic young pilot who carries with him an air of mystery.
Vee Katchatourian is a female pilot enlisted with the ATS and given the exciting and rather dangerous task of transporting fighter aeroplanes around to RAF bases in the UK. In occupied Poland, Ewa Hartman helps her father to run the family guesthouse in Poznan,where they are forced to give hospitality to German officers who are billeted in the town. Ordinarily the lives of these two brave young women should never have intertwined, but their very different relationships with Stefan Bergel will see both them facing grave danger.
Focused on the effect of living in a time when neither safety, nor shelter, was easily found, an uneasy atmosphere of mistrust pervades and I was quickly drawn into a story which is both poignant and dangerous in equal measure. Not only is wartime Poland brought to vivid life but there is also a specific thread to the story which refers to the Katyn Massacre, an event which happened in 1945, where Polish military officers were captured and killed by Soviet secret forces which is an atrocity I am ashamed to say I knew absolutely nothing about. All credit to the author for bringing this tragedy into focus on its 75th anniversary.
When We Fall is beautifully written, crisp and sharp with no emotion wasted and no expression left unobserved. Time and place slot together perfectly, from the stultified boredom of inactivity as Vee longs to fly, but doesn’t always get her pick of the choicest aircraft, to the creeping sense of disquiet as Ewa’s clandestine involvement with the local resistance places her in constant danger of discovery.
At times unutterably sad and at others, nail bitingly dangerous, When We Fall brings to poignant life such a tragic time in world history.
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