The Last Train to London

July 1, 2019
Clayton's (Beautiful Exiles, 2018, etc.) novel about the Kindertransport program joins the recent spate of Holocaust books (from All the Light We Cannot See to The Tattooist of Auschwitz) that allow readers to identity with heroes and survivors instead of victims. The real-life heroine here is Truus Wijsmuller, the Dutch Christian woman instrumental in smuggling approximately 10,000 children out of the Reich and into England through the Kindertransport. The villain is the infamous Adolph Eichmann. Early in his career Eichmann authored the influential paper "The Jewish Problem," about how to rid the Reich of Jews. After Germany took over Austria he landed a powerful position in Vienna. In 1938, Truus met with Eichmann, who offered what he assumed was an impossible deal: If she could arrange papers for exactly 600 healthy children to travel in one week's time--on the Sabbath, when Jewish law forbids travel--he would allow safe passage. With help from British activists, Truus successfully made the arrangements and found refuge for all 600 children in England. Clayton intersects these historical figures and events with fictional characters trapped in Vienna. Aspiring playwright Stephan, 15 years old when the novel begins in 1936, comes from a wealthy Jewish family, manufacturers of highly prized chocolate candies. The Nazis strip ownership of the chocolate factory from Stephan's father and hand it to Stephan's Aryan Uncle Michael. A guilty collaborator torn between greed and love, Michael is the novel's most realistically portrayed character, neither good nor entirely evil. Sensitive, brilliant, and precocious, Stephan is naturally drawn to equally sensitive, brilliant, and precocious Zofie-Helene, a math genius whose anti-Nazi father died under questionable circumstances and whose journalist mother writes the outspokenly anti-Nazi articles about actual events, like Britain's limiting Jewish immigration and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, that punctuate the plot. After Kristallnacht Stephan ends up hiding in Vienna's sewers (a weird nod to Orson Welles in The Third Man), and Zofie-Helene's mother is arrested. Will Stephan and Zofie-Helene end up among the children Truus saves? Workmanlike and less riveting than the subject matter.

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August 5, 2019
Clayton (Beautiful Exiles) reaches into the troubled lives of the Third Reich’s civilian victims, drawing readers into one woman’s efforts to save children in this excellent novel based on actual events. Geertruida Wijsmuller, known as “Tante Truus” and part of the Dutch resistance, is determined to risk everything to save children of all ages despite—or because of—her inability to bring a pregnancy to term herself. In Vienna, the lives of two children are highlighted: Stephan Neuman is Jewish, and because he turned 17 in 1938, he’s barely allowed to escape to England in the 1938–1939 Kindertransport, which will not accept 18-year-olds. Stephan’s friend and budding beloved, 15-year-old Sofie-Helene Perger, is not Jewish, but her mother is a journalist who refuses to stop writing articles critical of Hitler. Stephan, an aspiring playwright, must adapt to the changes in his life, which was once filled with wealth from his father’s famous chocolate factory. Math prodigy Sofie also tries to adapt, uncertain about how to help Stephan without threatening her own family. The children and Tante Truus’s stories don’t intersect until later in the book, when she secures them safe passage to England due to a daring, last-second decision. Clayton effectively captures the dim hope of survival amid the mounting terror of the lead-up to WWII. This is a standout historical fiction that serves as a chilling reminder of how insidious, pervasive evil can gradually seep into everyday lives. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff & Associates, Inc.

Starred review from August 1, 2019
Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer?a real-life Dutch Resistance fighter and the heroine of Clayton's enlightening, meticulously researched historical novel?began rescuing Jewish children from the Third Reich as early as 1933. As Nazi power grew, she expanded her efforts, ushering hundreds of children to safety. Clayton's story of this remarkable woman, known as Tante Truus, is enriched by a compelling cast of fictional characters. Stephan Neuman, son of a Jewish businessman in Austria, is a budding playwright at 17; his good friend, Zofie-Helene, is a math whiz. In chapters alternating with those describing Tante Truus' dangerous trips between Austria and the Netherlands, Clayton relates the struggles faced by the young pair. Stephan's father is picked up by the Gestapo, and dies in German custody; Stephan hides in underground tunnels. Zofie is Christian, but her father is dead, and her mother, a well-known journalist who writes fearlessly about the Nazi treatment of Jews, is sent to jail. Eventually Tante Truus convinces Adolf Eichmann to let her take one last train of Austrian children to England, where they will be housed in camps until families are found to shelter them. Stephan, Zofie, and Stephan's younger brother make this harrowing journey to an uncertain future, one experienced by so many.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 13, 2019

Clayton (Beautiful Exiles; The Race for Paris) pulls readers into the lives of three families and their entwined fates in this fictional account of the Kindertransports (Children's Transport), the real-life efforts to save thousands of Jewish children by getting them across the Nazi border into safe homes. The story starts with everyday joy and heartache. In 1936 Austria, Stephan, the teenage son of a Jewish chocolatier, begins a romance with Zofie-Helene, the daughter of a Christian anti-Nazi journalist. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, Truus Wijsmuller and her husband cope with the pain of her infertility by smuggling Jewish children out of Germany. Truus convinces Nazi officials to allow her to remove Jewish children from Austria, but their cruelty requires her to rehome exactly 600 youths within a week before the borders close. Stephan and Zofie-Helene and their families must find a way out before the window for Truus to rescue threatened children shuts.

VERDICT With its well-developed characters and race-against-the-clock plot, this fantastic novel should have broad appeal, especially with fans of historical fiction and thrillers. [See Prepub Alert, 3/4/19.]--Heidi Uphoff, Albuquerque, NM

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