The Sunflower House by Adriana Allegri

We meet Allina in present day and at 86 years old when her daughter brings her home from the hospital.

While her mother was resting, Katrine went upstairs to clean up what her mother had fallen on and came across a box with papers inside and with a swastika on top. Was my mother a Nazi?

When she looks up, her mother is in the doorway  

Her mother decides that she needs to tell her daughter how they got to America and what she dealt with while she was in Germany.

We are taken back to 1938 when Allina‘s village is raided and all the residents were slaughtered.

A German officer saved Allina from it all, but she said she would rather have perished with everyone else than to go through what she had to go through.

The officer took her to "Hochland Home" which was the first Lebensborn facility where German women were required to have babies to German officers to make sure the “perfect” race was not wiped out. 

The rules and guidelines enforced by Heinrich Himmler for the women and especially the babies and children made Allina sick.  They were so strict and uncaring. 

SUNFLOWER HOUSE is a heartbreaking but enlightening read where secrets were kept for years and where the reader can’t believe it happened. 

A marvelous debut - wonderful research, pull-you-in writing, and some tender moments despite what was going on. 

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of the book.  All opinions are my own.