Coming Back to Home by Elaine Stock ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

Is it ever too late to find the one place meant to call home?

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site.  A free book was provided for an honest review.

April 2026; Black Rose Writing; 978-0999576366
ebook, print (298 pages); historical fiction

This book is an emotional and well-researched story about World War II and the years after the war.  It is about the lives of two women who meet during the war, and even though they are very different from each other with totally different backgrounds, they are both looking for the same thing in their lives – home and family.

Liselotte leaves her mother and her twin daughters behind to search for the man she loves.  When she finds his body, she realizes that she has to find a way back to her family, but there are so many roadblocks due to the war.  She meets Klaus in a bomb shelter, and he promises to protect her always and takes her to his family home.  The more she finds out about him, the less she wants to be with him.  Not only is he a Nazi, but he is high-ranking and reports directly to Himmler.  When she realizes that he wants her to work with him in Poland to ‘Germanize’ Aryan looking Polish children to be adopted by German families, she knows that she has to escape.  Her journey through war-torn Germany is fraught with danger, and the truth is that if Klaus catches her, she’ll be killed.

Audrey is a young woman in Minnesota when the United States enters the war.  She wants to do something to help her country, and much to her parents’ displeasure, she joins the Red Cross and travels to Europe to do what she can.  Her parents refuse to answer her letters or phone calls, so she is truly on her own.  After several jobs at different locations in Europe, she ends up in Germany trying to help survivors find their families and eventually meets Liselotte and works to find her mother and twin daughters.

I’m not going to tell you any more about the plot except to say that both women face unbelievable hardships by trying to help other people.  It gets to the point that one of the most important parts of their lives is their friendship with each other. I thought that both of the main characters – Liselotte and Audrey were well written and their journeys were very believable. I cheered at their victories and wept at their pasts.  Even though the subject matter in the book is very depressing at times, the end reminds us that there is always happiness to be found in life, even when you quit looking for it.  

NOTE:  The first book in the WHEN HOPE CALLS series is THE LAST SECRET KEPT.  Read the review here.  To get maximum enjoyment from book two, you should read the books in order.

Buy Coming Back to Home at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she is three hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.

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