Washoe County Library System

"Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath...

After the death of her father, Hannah becomes concerned with the strange behavior of her mother. Traveling to Berlin to interview a woman who knew her mother as a child, Hannah hears the story of a week in 1943 when the Aryan wives of Jewish men held captive in a building on Rosenstrasse protested in the name of love, and realizes how little she knew of her mother's troubled childhood.