5.0 out of 5 stars History's human face without moral pointing fingers

I have received Elisabeth Marrion's book 'Cuckoo Clock' during the Kensington Christmas Book Faire 2015 as a present from the author. After already having read her book 'The Night I Danced with Rommel', I was happy to read another book written by her. The story evolves around a Jewish family's flight from Germany, shortly after the so-called 'Kristallnacht', a pogrom on November 9 and 10, 1938. This wave of violence took place throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops. What fascinates me about Elisabeth's books is her ability to give history a human face. All her characters are people, whose stories of life become extraordinary as they have to try and survive in dignity and humaness despite atrocities during political circumstances, trying to destroy them. I love the writer's style. Elisabeth's personality, as I have come to know her, shines through her books. The cuckoo clock, the symbol of the Black Forest in Germany, means much to me, a foreigner myself in England of German origin. Time does not stand still, it moves on. Why not craft a lovely piece of art to count the seconds, minutes and hours of lives travelling through ages and countries to finally reach a destination where they unite in memory of those who have travelled parts of their paths with them? I thoroughly enjoyed Elisabeth's book and highly recommend it to readers who are willing to search for the human face behind statistics and moral pointing fingers. I also recommend this book to readers who might have forgotten, or do not like to think about, what people who have to flee their country are going through.

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