This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Free Book Program, which is open to all readers and is completely free. The author will provide you with a free copy of their book in exchange for an honest review. You and the author will discuss what sites you will post your review to and what kind of copy of the book you would like to receive (eBook, PDF, Word, paperback, etc.). To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email.
This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Review Exchange Program, which is open to all authors and is completely free. Simply put, you agree to provide an honest review an author's book in exchange for the author doing the same for you. What sites your reviews are posted on (B&N, Amazon, etc.) and whether you send digital (eBook, PDF, Word, etc.) or hard copies of your books to each other for review is up to you. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email, and be sure to describe your book or include a link to your Readers' Favorite review page or Amazon page.
This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Donation Program, which was created to help nonprofit and charitable organizations (schools, libraries, convalescent homes, soldier donation programs, etc.) by providing them with free books and to help authors garner more exposure for their work. This author is willing to donate free copies of their book in exchange for reviews (if circumstances allow) and the knowledge that their book is being read and enjoyed. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email. Be sure to tell the author who you are, what organization you are with, how many books you need, how they will be used, and the number of reviews, if any, you would be able to provide.
Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite
Marike is Prussian, but after World War II ends, she and her four children, Heinz, Elisabet, Helena and Edel, her sister Agathe and her children, and their elderly mother and father seek refuge in designated camps in Denmark. Marike's husband, Horst, has been missing in battle for most of the war. Sadly, their homeland of Prussia no longer exists as it has been divided between the Polish and the Russians. The Danes are not happy with having to provide housing for displaced Germans like Marike and her family and what Marike and her family face is horrific. They subside in cold barracks, often sleeping on concrete floors, with powdered milk and thin soups for food, helped only by donations from the Mennonite community of which they were members back in Prussia. Marike's father and then her mother pass away and Marika herself develops pleurisy. Moved back to French-occupied Germany, Marike works for a hate-filled farmer father and his daughter to provide for her four children. Marike sings, tells her children stories but will this keep them going until they reach America?
"Barbed Wire and Daisies" by Carol Strazer is a story that is the testament to a family's strength under unending hardship. Many stories are written about Holocaust survivors, of the English, French, and Dutch who survived during World War II, but writing about the Germans who had to flee their homeland after World War II has been almost non-existent. In "Barbed Wire and Daisies", the author tells of one of those German families as they learned to stay within the barbed wire that surrounded their camp, gazing at but not picking, the flowers growing outside their confines. In wartime, everyone suffers and "Barbed Wire and Daisies" relates this so very well.
