The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman

I just started (and finished) a really great read if you're looking for something.  It's not a light read by any means.  I literally had to stop reading every so often to take a deep breath because I a) was not breathing and b) could literally feel my heart breaking. 

Written in the voices of a Jewish husband and his wife separated from each other in Prague just before Hitler's invasion into Czechoslovakia, it explores the horrible atrocities that happened in Europe in the Second World War.  It was devastating. 

My mind cannot even conceive the horrible, horrible things that happened so long ago to people who's only crime was being born Jewish.  Men, women and children were given death sentences more evil than I can comprehend.  We are stuck here in the middle between wanting to forget that something so evil ever happened, while also knowing that we must never, ever forget so that it doesn't happen again.  And yet even as I write this, civil wars around the world are taking people's lives and nothing is being done.  But what do you do?  How do you save a world that does not want to be saved?

The woman in this book makes several decisions that are so brave and it made me really think about my own character.  If met with a gut wrenching decision that required bravery and possibly put my life at risk for the ones I loved, would I make the right decision?  Would I choose the easy way out or I would I swallow my fear and go in head first?  What is most important to me in this life, and what am I willing to do to fight for it, to protect it, to nurture it?

Seriously, this book is an amazing read.  And I leave you with this thought, which puts everything into perspective.