Rose Under Fire

One thing that I have realized, is that we often take our freedoms for granted.

We have the ability to write whatever we want. We have the ability to be free.

But what if all of that was taken from you?

What if, one day your life was suddenly governed by prison guards, hunger, and the fear of being killed?

Rose Under Fire was written by Elizabeth Wein and was published in 2013.

This novel is set a few months after the events of Code Name Verity, and it sees some of the characters from the original novel return for a brief period of time.

The story, told in the form of a survivor’s account, centers around eighteen year old Rose Justice, an American pilot who comes over to Britain to help with the war effort.

Rose is sent on an assignment to fly her uncle into the liberated area of Paris, France. But while she is there, she accidentally ends up in German territory and is caught.

Rose is then sent into the infamous female prison camp, Ravensbrück

There her fellow prisoners become her family. There is Lisette, a famous French novelist, Irina, a Russian fighter pilot, Karolina, a young Polish film maker, and Rosa a fifteen year old girl who was a test subject in the medical experiments the Nazi’s did on the female prisoners, a “rabbit” as Rosa likes to call herself.

Though this novel is not as suspenseful as Code Name Verity, it is intense in its own way. Wein shows the reader what it was like to be stuck in one of the Nazi prison camps. She brings to light the horribly real experiments that were preformed on women by Nazi doctors. Rose Under Fire also did a good job of once again describing environment of Europe in WWII as well as the dangerous task pilots had to face.

Watching Rose and her family fight to survive, never giving up the hope of being liberated, of being free, adds a tone of resilience and hope to the novel, leaving the reader feeling both determined and hopeful.

Rose Under Fire is a novel that deals with a rather dark subject. But at the same time, it is a story of hope. a story of defying the odds and surviving the the unsurvivable.  A story of finding friends-and a family- in the least likely of places.

“I will tell the world” is something that Rose vows throughout the novel. Elizabeth Wein, through the voice of eighteen-year-old Rose Justice, does tell the world of some of the forgotten victims of WWII. Rose tells the world of her fight to survive, and the message of her story will stay with the reader long after they have finished the book.

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