‘For years, Allina had begged her aunt and uncle for more information about her real parents. Your mother and father loved you very much, they’d always reply, but it’s best to keep the past in the past.”
That’s a quote from the first chapter of Adrianna Allegri’s historical novel The Sunflower House. The prologue takes place in the summer of 2006.
Allina is eighty-six when her daughter discovers a hidden box with a swastika on its cover. The discovery causes Allina to reveal secrets about her past, starting with that while living in Germany in 1938, her guardians revealed to her that she came from Jewish blood.
Most of the novel takes place during WWII. Allina is taken by a Nazi officer to Hochland House, a state-run baby factory where young women are used to perpetuate the Aryan race. While she waits to learn if, in fact, the Nazi officer has impregnated her, she works as a nurse in one of the nurseries.
While working there she realizes that the emotionally sterile environments are causing defects in the infants’ development. As much as she fears for her own life, she becomes determined to save as many children as she can. She meets an SS officer who has his own secrets and together they work to save the children.
As the jacket says, this novel “is a poignant, heartrending, and meticulously researched debut, vividly recounting the atrocities of Nazi Germany’s Infamous Lebensborn program in the story of one woman’s determination to resist and survive.”
If you’re looking for a well written story about the Lebensborn program, then you must read The Sunflower House by Adriana Allegri.
