Return to Berlin by Ellen Feldman

 This is a beautifully-written and poignant story about love, forgiveness and redemption. Although it is somewhat harrowing, I was so impressed with this novel that I will definitely read more of Ellen Feldman's books. It was also a change from my usual Second World War novels, because it was set in the Occupation of Germany after the war.

Meike and her brother David escaped the horrors of the war in Germany to live in America with rather cold relatives, but they never saw their family again. Meike ('Millie') made it to the highly prestigious Bryn Mawr College, and decided to return to Germany to work for denazification, where her brother joins her. She remembers a cultivated, upper-class Berlin with handsome buildings, and linden trees, but she finds it an extremely different world. Now it's full of ruined buildings, poverty-stricken people, and gangsters. Millie tries to navigate this world, but her hatred for the Nazis gets in the way of her helping ordinary people affected by the war. Major Harry Sutton, her colleague, tries to help her, but has Millie become unreachable?

Although I really liked this book, I doubt that I will read it again, because it is just too harrowing, so I will give it away. I read this for Rose City Reader's TBR 23 in '23 Challenge.