Book Review:
The Golden Doves by Martha Hall Kelly
Written by: Merrill Robinson
For those of you who have read “Lilac Girls,” and loved it, I can assure you that you will also adore The Golden Doves by Martha Hall Kelly. It seems to me that Martha goes above and beyond with her research and provides a great balance between researched events and a fictional plot for the sake of the storyline.
I stayed up far too late reading The Golden Doves and my heart ached the entire time as I read Josie and Arlette’s story. Their individual perils were tough, but what they endured together was far worse. What makes Kelly’s stories so compelling is that she also unsheathes the harsh truth and she wraps it up into a story that you can’t put down.
Let’s dive in…
Synopsis for The Golden Doves by Martha Hall Kelly:
In the wake of World War II, two former female spies who are connected by their shared past risk everything to find an infamous Nazi doctor—an incredible novel based on true events written by the New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls.
As part of the French resistance, American Josie Anderson and Parisian Arlette LaRue are ecstatic to be continuously falling under the radar of the Gestapo and obtaining so many Nazi secrets that they earn the nickname “Golden Doves,” becoming well-known throughout France. The longer they remain in operation, the more of a target they draw on their backs – it takes pure guts to continue with their communication and to relay all of the Nazi secrets they receive. Eventually, they lose everything due to their bravery.
A recluse Nazi doctor performs horrible things to Josie’s mother, a well-known Jewish singer who accompanied her daughter to Paris before the Nazi invasion, but they are eventually apprehended and sent to the Ravensbrück death camp together with their loved ones. Furthermore, Arlette’s son is taken from her and never seen again, most likely being sucked into the Lebensborn program for the next generation of Nazi Youth.
Ten years later, the Doves get drawn into a perilous double mission: Josie, an agent for the U.S. Army, takes on the task of tracking down the notorious doctor, while Arlette receives a mystery man’s claim that he could have located her son. The Golden Doves set off on a journey that would take them through Europe and eventually to French Guiana. Along the way, they uncover a web of horrifying truths and are forced to risk everything in order to bring about justice and save the people they care about.
Martha Hall Kelly has won praise for investigating the horrors of Ravensbrück and for her amazing fusion of empathy and historical knowledge into the lives of women. She has written a gripping tale about the fortunes of Nazi fugitives in the wake of World War II with The Golden Doves, as well as the unsung female spies who risked everything to bring them to justice.
Merrill's Takeaway of Martha Hall Kelly's The Golden Doves:
This was a powerful and enlightening account of life as clandestine resistance fighters who put bravery above safety each day, as well as how the war continued to plague resistance fighters in the camps following the war – from the prisoners to the Nazi scientists sent to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip and the people who went on to carry out even more atrocities and escape punishment.
The narrative alternates between Arlette’s and Josie’s perspectives. It jumps around in time and space, which, if you’re not paying attention to, can be confusing. We discover more about their time as The Golden Doves, including how they arrived there and the events at Ravensbrück. In true Martha Kelly Hall fashion, she does such a wonderful job of fusing the fictional narrative with her well-researched plot line that it often left me wondering what was true and what was fiction – I even caught myself putting the book down to research certain aspects of the storyline as I read!
I always learn something new from books written by Martha Hall Kelly, who has a reputation for producing historically accurate fiction. Two topics I learned about in The Golden Doves were “Operation Paperclip,” which was the US government’s program to recruit Nazi scientists to the US, and “Nazi Ratline,” which describes how numerous Nazi war criminals were able to evade prosecution with the aid of numerous governments and religious institutions throughout the Americas. This well-researched book also discussed the post-war fate of Nazi war criminals who fled to the jungles of South America and how Nazi scientists and physicians escaped a similar fate due to the Nazi Ratline. If you appreciate a good historical fiction story—especially one where you might meet some amazing individuals and learn some interesting things—I highly recommend this one.
All things considered, this was a fascinating tale about strong, fearless, and tough women. They performed admirably despite having to put up with masculine stereotypes of what women “could” do. Throughout the book, there was mystery, suspense, and grief that kept me on the edge of my seat up to the very end!
Despite its length, if you enjoy WWII historical fiction, you shouldn’t pass on this. It’s a well-written, fascinating, well-researched, and significant book. Martha Hall Kelly has always been a clever writer, and even though The Golden Dove is a stand-alone novel, I really liked how she included characters from her previous books, like Lilac Girls.