The Brunswick by Callie Murray

Author Callie Murray’s debut historical fiction novel set in 1939 Georgia is loosely based on true events. These include the repercussions of the 1929 Great Depression, the Brunswick Hotel that fell into disrepair after the Great Depression, the imminent war in Germany, the persecution of Jewish people by the Nazis, Eleanor and Gilbert Kraus’s rescue mission of 50 European Jewish children to Philadelphia, and more.

In Norcross, Georgia, Cora Cain feels like a prisoner in her small town. Even though she’s barely past her teens, she feels as if life has passed her by. Four years ago, her French-born mother deserted her and her war-hero father. Also, the Great Depression dealt a fatal blow to the once magnificent Brunswick Hotel, built by Cora’s father as a love gift for his wife and now encumbered by significant debt.

In order to survive, Cora has turned part of the hotel into a general store. She receives no help at all from her mentally unstable father, who suffers quietly from his psychological war wounds and barely leaves his room.

When a stranger comes to town and offers to help Cora with the store, she’s not sure what to make of the offer. After all, she doesn’t have any money to pay the man. On the other hand, she’s exhausted and can barely keep fulfilling all her responsibilities. Cora decides to hire the man, named Thomas Watkins, and the two slowly form a friendship. As each begins to open up to the other, they ponder the truth that often “the risk is worth the reward.”

The risks they take in opening up to each other are nothing compared to what will be demanded of them when a local couple attempting to bring 50 Jewish children from Austria to Norcross ask Cora for permission that most of them be billeted in the hotel’s long-empty rooms. Though Cora hesitates at first, she agrees even as she is afraid that her ill father, who is filled with hatred because of his experiences in the Great War, will obstruct the hospitality required of them.

Meanwhile in Austria, Jewish 10-year-old Charlotte and her mother and father feel the tightening Nazi noose. The threesome know they must make every effort to leave the country before the borders are closed, or they will face certain death.

In The Brunswick, Callie Murray skillfully explores themes of discrimination before the outbreak of WWII, both against Jewish people and against peace-loving German Americans. It portrays how war affects children and the ways they cope in order to survive; reveals how fostering and adopting children can potentially create hope and new beginnings in desperate situations; and renders a lovely romance in which two broken-hearted people find healing and joy together. Murray’s Christian faith is subtly revealed throughout the narrative. (Revell)