Karolina's twins

*Starred Review* Attorney Catherine Lockhart and private investigator Liam Taggart are back in Balson's third novel, this time with a new client, Lena Woodward, an elderly Holocaust survivor. Lena's son doesn't want them looking into anything and forces a competency hearing for his mother, hoping to have himself appointed her guardian. Meanwhile, Lena spends days telling Catherine about her childhood in Poland, the Nazi takeover of her town, her job as a seamstress that helped her avoid the first wave of Jews sent to concentration camps, her time with the Resistance, her eventual trip to a camp, and her life since the war. Along the way, her childhood best friend, Karolina, is present, and the two girls try to save her twin babies during the war. Lena has no idea what happened to the babies, but if they survived, they would be 70 years old, and she is determined to find them. The search takes Liam to Poland, Israel, and Germany, but it is Lena's story that is so riveting. In a departure from Balson's previous novels, much of the story is told in the first person, befitting a book inspired by a Holocaust survivor's true story. Readers who crave more books like Balson's Once We Were Brothers (2013) and Kristin Hannah's best-selling The Nightingale (2014) will be enthralled by Karolina's Twins.--Alesi, Stacy Copyright 2016 Booklist

Lena Woodward, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor, asks Catharine Lockhart, a Chicago attorney, and her husband, Liam, a private investigator, to find her best friend Karolina's twin daughters, who were lost in 1943 during their transport by the Germans to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Lena reveals a heartbreaking tale of a mother's love, friendship, and family in the face of increasingly brutal conditions and the constant threat of imminent death in Nazi-occupied Poland. Lena's son -Arthur is convinced it is all a hoax, a plan by someone to separate his mother from her money. A pregnant Catherine, naturally empathetic to the plight of innocent babies, finds herself potentially in contempt of court by insisting on upholding a critical attorney-client confidentiality. The overall theme and quick flow of the narrative are reminiscent of the author's first novel, Once We Were Brothers, but the story itself is quite dissimilar. -VERDICT Readers interested in the continuing manifestations of the horrors of the Holocaust will find this tale compelling.-Vicki Gregory, Sch. of Information, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.