VBT Padlocked by p.m. terrell
Publisher: Drake Valley Press
Genre: Literary Fiction
Rated: 5 stars
Review by Rose

Padlocked is an epic historical and visionary novel that follows the lives of a group of ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary, life-altering circumstances as Nazi Germany invades Poland in 1939.

Two foreign photojournalists, an American and a Spaniard, are trapped between armies at Festungsfront Oder-Warthe-Bogen, along Poland’s western border with Germany. It is Hank’s last overseas assignment, and he’s been counting the days until he can go home to North Carolina to be with his family. Rafe fled Spain after the dictator, Francisco Franco, targeted his family. The experience changed him, and he now sees the rise of fascism in Europe as a battle between good and evil. They will find themselves embedded with the Polish, Nazi, and Soviet forces at varying times, forcing them to face moral and ethical decisions in their struggles to survive.

A young woman is separated from her sister in Warsaw as the Nazis encircle it. Agata made a vow that she would return to take Elsa to safety, but soldiers and barbed wire prevent her from entering the newly established Jewish sector. She is consumed with guilt over their separation, and when she discovers her sister was taken by train to a work camp near Krakow, she navigates her dangerous, war-torn country in search of her. Her quest will force her to confront a Hell on Earth to find her.

A young man joins the Jungdeutsche Partei, or the Young German Party. Once bullied as a child, Max’s new affiliations promote him to a position where he can dictate life or death and settle scores. In order to thrive under Nazi occupation, he makes daily choices that legitimize brutality and erode humanitarian principles and scruples.

While they don’t know one another at the start of their journeys, each will make decisions that have the power to transform them and place them on paths that ultimately converge on January 27, 1945, as the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front opened the gates to Auschwitz-Birkenau for all the world to witness.

This is ultimately a story about the strength of love, courage, faith, and resilience in the face of unimaginable hatred and obsession with power, and how every decision we make places us further along specific paths.

Every once in a while you read a story so compelling you don’t want to put it down. Padlocked is that story for me. From the first page, you are drawn into a world so well drawn you feel like you are there. The characters are three dimensional and very compelling. The author’s writing puts you right in the middle of the action with the characters and it’s just like you are living through the struggles with them.

The author has done a tremendous amount of research and it shows, but never in a heavy-handed way or by infodrop. Instead she incorporates the research into the story itself, which adds to the reality for the reader. Great job!

This is not just a straight historical fiction, however. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but suffice it to say there is an additional element that layers the story with an additional depth of meaning I did not expect when I started reading the book. And, it was this element that took this book from a 4 star rating to a 5. It is quite easily one of my favorite parts of the book.